Replacing your SharePoint form with an Openous form

Replacing your SharePoint form with an Openous form


In order to start designing and using an Openous form for a list or a document library, just navigate to the list and use the command bar (modern UI) or the list ribbon (classic experience) respective option:

Openous Option in SharePoint Modern UI Experience


Openous Option in SharePoint Classic UI Experience


After clicking the Openous button you will be navigated to the Openous Forms Designer page for the specific list/document library, and you are ready to start designing your form. For details on how to use the Designer see Using the designer.

Once you are happy with your design and save it, you can replace the out of the box SharePoint form, with an Openous form. SharePoint typically uses 3 types of forms for lists:

  • “New Form” for new items (not applicable to document libraries)
  • “Edit Form” for editing existing items
  • “Display Form” for providing a read-only view of your data.

By clicking the “List Settings” icon  on the upper right corner of the Designer, you will be able to see the available form types for this form:



For each selected list’s form type (New/Edit/Display), if a native SharePoint form is used you will see the “SharePoint Form” indication to the “Current Usage” column. This means that when any of the SharePoint users, clicks to create, view or edit an item in the specified list, the out of the box SharePoint form appears. However, if Openous is already used for rendering the New/Edit/Display form for this list, you will see the “Openous” indication.

In order to start using an Openous form for any of the list’s form types, click the “Openous form” button that is next to the desired form type (New/Edit/Display). After a while, Openous form will be registered for this list and form type. In order to revert this setting back to the native SharePoint form, click the “SharePoint form” button.

Note: Registering and unregistering Openous for the list doesn’t affect the design definition of your form, which means that your customizations will not be lost throughout these operations. Once you register Openous again, the latest Saved form design will be shown.

In case nothing happens when you click any of these buttons for Office 365/SharePoint online environment, you may need to change the popup blocker settings in your browser and always allow popups from the Openous designer site. 

Alternatively, you can navigate to the Home Dashboard page of Openous, find the list or document library you are interested in, and use the "Design" and "Register" options under each list/document library:



All lists and document libraries are searchable using the search area at the bottom of the dashboard

For SharePoint online/Office 365 environments, if this is the first time you are ever using the "Register Forms" functionality in order to actually publish a form design to your end users, you will see a set of configuration steps to execute, due to security restrictions imposed by the SharePoint Online plarform. These are only needed once (during the first time) for a site, and will not be asked again. The steps are:
  1. Allow custom script to your site. This is necessary for the Openous web parts to render your custom form. Please consult this article for more information.
  2. Upload the Openous aspx page to your Openous page library. This page is used to add or remove the Openous web parts within your EditForm/NewForm/DispForm page of your list.

See also