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If you have Terminal Server access to the SharePoint server, the easiest way for me is to use SharePoint Management Shell and run the following: The ‘Title’ column lists the field display name, and the ‘InternalName’ column its internal name.
In a SharePoint list, we usually use the user friendly (readable) names in list columns or fields. Each column has a display name and internal name which we also call as physical name of the column / field. There are not many options for how to get the internal name and the easiest way is to copy it from the query string.
How to change the name of a column in SharePoint?
Because of this, if you have more than one column with the same first 20 characters, SharePoint creates StaticNames as follows: Clearly this renumbering can get confusing, too, so a lot of folks will create their columns without spaces in the names (ProductDescription1) and then change the DisplayName.
Is the internal name of the site column updated?
The InternalName of the site column can be updated by changing it in the feature (“Name” attribute) and redeploying. However, the site column InternalName is not propagated to list instances via SPField.Update, and AFAICT, cannot be changed, updated, or fixed at all.
How to find the internal name for a list column?
The easiest way I found was to right click on the list view page and then “View Page Source” and then Ctrl + F a representative from he list. This way you can find all internal column names easily. Thanks for contributing an answer to SharePoint Stack Exchange! Please be sure to answer the question.
Before executing the query, the client library doesn’t know the real type of the returned object “field”, and SharePoint.Field is the only possible type. If you know the real type, you can use the ClientContext.CastTo method to cast the object.
Is the site column internal name propagated to list instances?
However, the site column InternalName is not propagated to list instances via SPField.Update, and AFAICT, cannot be changed, updated, or fixed at all. Perhaps it is possible by twiddling with the underlying rows in the database, but that is obviously unsupported.