blank option in drop down disappears from custom Sharepoint list

Question

I have a custom list template that is deployed as a .wsp. The list has almost 30 columns, including several DropDownLists of column type "Choice". None of the columns are required and the customer wants a blank option as the default selection for each. Unfortunately once the list item has been saved, any columns that have had values selected can no longer be un-selected.

To get around this we added a blank <CHOICE> </CHOICE> element in the schema.xml and event.xml files.

Unfortunately, one of the columns completely ignores the blank choice - acts just the same as I described above (SP default behavior). I have already checked the obvious (to me) things - making sure guids match up, the blank choice exists in both files, etc.

Any other ideas on what I can look into to fix?

Answer 1

There is no way around this behaviour. You will either have to create your own custom field to allow this behaviour, or add a choice with the value "[blank]" as the default (and make the field required).

Not really ideal in either case.