Create a Data View using SP Designer

Using Sharepoint Designer one can create a custom data view that can get data from several sources such as web services, xml data, database queries, and Sharepoint Lists. The view populates the data in real time and hence can be made available to the user’s as a web page. This article outlines the method of creating a data view from a SP List.

• Open SP Designer
• Select File > New > ASPX from the menu. This opens a blank aspx page
• Switch to Split view (by selecting the ‘click’ tab found at the bottom of the page)
• Place the cursor in the ‘form’ field in the Design region
• Select Data View > Insert Data View from the menu
• On the design page ‘Click a data source in the Data Source Library, and then click Show Data’ link appears
• Click on that link. Select the Sharepoint list from the Data Source Library region. Refer screen print below

• Click on the list for which a data view is required and select ‘Show Data’. Refer screen print below

• Available ‘Fiields’ from the list are displayed in the Data Source Library region
• Select the required fields – Click ‘Insert Selected Fields as’ and select ‘Multiple Item View’. Screen shot below illustrates that

• The data view with the selected fields is displayed in the Design view

What next? You have a basic data view and would like to select columns, reorder columns, or sort data

How to Filter and Sort Data

• Click the arrow that appears to the right of the heading row. This displays the ‘Common Data View Tasks’ window

• The ‘Common Data View Tasks’ window allows you to filter, sort, or edit the data columns.
• Click ‘Data View Properties’ – this has more options like displaying the toolbar with filter, sort, and group options. This is useful as the end user has the ability to filter and group the report to meet their requirements. The Sharepoint Administrator can focus on other tasks

Format the Page

You may want to format the aspx page so the output is consistent with that of the master page. Select Format > Master Page > Attach Master Page from the menu to do this.

Save the page

The last step is to save the aspx page on the server, File > Save As from the menu and make available the URL to the users by placing in on the Sharepoint site so they can access the data in real time.

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