SharePoint and the magic of query strings

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One of typical requests from users is the ability to have a page open in a certain state, where things automagically appear and happen by themselves.

Throughout my travels, I have come by many of these magic strings of text that we put into the url bar and something amazing happens, some of these not even accessible - at least easily - through the user interface.

My goal with this post is to lay down some of these bad boys, who they are and what they do.


Old but gold, open the "Web Part Page Maintenance"

Query: ?contents=1

Result: opens a page with all the web part instances, effectively allowing us to manage (close, delete, etc.) web parts and very useful to troubleshoot problematic web parts

Go into the current page's edit mode

If - for whatever reason - you need to open a page in edit mode, you can add this one.

Query: ?ToolPaneView=2

Result: page opens automatically in edit mode

Open a view in quick edit mode

We can open up a view already in quick edit mode without users having to click List > Quick Edit.

Query: ?ShowInGrid=True

Result: opens a view in quick edit (datasheet) mode for editing items in place

Open a view with headings as filters

List view fields can be used to filter out items, but this is not shown by default.

Query: ?filter=1&filterclear=1

Result: filter will enable the fields as filters and filterclear will ensure that the filters persist through out the session

Filtering views with advanced query strings

This is by far the most helpful and flexible query string mechanism available in list views. So much so that I will need to have sub-categories for them:

Filtering a single field with a single value

Query: ?FilterField1=Country&FilterValue1=Portugal

Result: returns results with Portugal as country


Filtering multiple fields and with single values


Query: ?FilterField1=Country&FilterValue1=Portugal&FilterValue2=City&FilterValue2=Lisbon

Result: returns results with Portugal as Country and Lisbon as City


Filtering a single field with multiple possible values


Query: ?FilterName=Country&FilterMultiValue=Portugal;United States of America

Result: returns results where the country is either Portugal or USA


Filtering a single field with multiple possible values using wildcards


Query: ?FilterName=Country&FilterMultiValue=*ortuga*;*states of ameri*

Result: returns results where the country is either Portugal or USA, while specifying only a subset of the string we want to search for


Now let's put them all together

Query: ?Filter=1&FilterField1=Country&FilterValue1=Portugal&FilterValue2=City&FilterValue2=Lisbon&FilterName=Subject&FilterMultiValue=*human resources*;*procurement*

Result: This url will enable headings as filters, it will query results with Portugal as Country and Lisbon as City, and it will also look for results where the Subject contains either human resources or procurement


Further reading:

Connect a Filter Web Part to a List View Web Part on a classic page

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