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I'm running into a situation where a Site Collection has several sub sites. Each sub site has data related to a particular geographical region. When trying to create content types / site columns for use in each site's document libraries, naming conflicts in site column names become inevitable.

For example:

Site A - Create a site column with the name of "Field Office" that is a lookup to a list on Site A.

Site B - Create a site column with the name of "Field Office" that is a... whoops, can't use this name because its already being used by Site A.

I guess we could use something like "Field Office [Geographical Region]", but that starts to look a bit odd on the SharePoint list forms, re: we already know we're in the geographical region, why is the form re-stating that?

Further, there are sites in the site collection that are represented by Division; these sites will have Site Columns with a "Field Office" as well.

What have you done in the past to overcome this limitation?

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  • I object to being called an unknown yahoo... Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 20:48

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I dont see any problem with using something like "Field Office [Geographical Region]".

As far as displaying in list form is concerned, the display name can be changed from individual list settings. So "Field Office - US" and "Field Office - Europe" can be displayed as "Field Office" in respective region sites.

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  • Brilliant! I always thought when you changed the name on the library, it updated the parent site column as well. Thank You. I'd up vote you, but I don't have rep. Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 20:49
  • .. been playing too much TF2, the answer was so obvious xD Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 22:36
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I'd recommend creating your Field Office as a singe Site column at the Site Collection level - then use Content Types for each region at your Web level, re-using that Field Office column.

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  • The Field office choices should only be relevant to the region. Each site maintains their own list of field offices. I'm not sure this would work. Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 19:49
  • Ah right, Field Office is a lookup, gotcha. The only option I think is to have separately named columns - or you could separate each region off into their own Site collections, but this might have issues when you want to roll up across regions. Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 20:04
  • The site collection suffers from wild wild west syndrome. The option to re-architect isn't an option here. You know how that goes. Really is quite frustration that you can not have duplicate site column names in separate groups. Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 20:13
  • Absolutely - I have had this problem before but in the heat of the moment (lol), I just thought "f*** it, I'll use another name...". It is quite daft though how that even thought column has a GUID and an InternalName, both unique, the Display Name still needs to be unique. Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 20:21

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