Show/Hide a Sharepoint fields in the NewForm, EditForm and DispForm

With the Sharepoint WebServices it’s possible to hide a field into the NewForm, the Editform and/or the DispForm.
You’ll need to use JavaScript with jQuery and SPServices. It’s the UpdateList service that will do the trick.

Once you have loaded the both librairies you can use the below code:

var fieldsToUpdate = '<Fields>';
fieldsToUpdate += '<Method ID="1"><Field Type="Text" Name="My_x0020_Field" DisplayName="My Field" ShowInDisplayForm="FALSE" ShowInEditForm="FALSE" ShowInNewForm="FALSE"></Field></Method>';
fieldsToUpdate += '</Fields>';

$().SPServices({
  operation: "UpdateList",
  listName: "Name of the list",
  listProperties:"",
  updateFields: fieldsToUpdate,
  newFields: "",
  deleteFields: "",
  listVersion: "",
  completefunc: function (xData, Status){}
});

As explained into this Stackoverflow’s question you must provide a minimum of three mandatory properties, and in this order:

1. Type
2. Name
3. DisplayName

The Type must reflect the type of your field. This information is available into the MSDN documentation. The most common values should be Boolean | Calculated | Choice | Currency | DateTime | Integer | Lookup | LookupMulti | MultiChoice | Number | Text | User | UserMulti.

The Name is the internal name (usually the spaces are replaced with « _x0020_ »).

And for each form (ShowInDisplayForm | ShowInEditForm | ShowInNewForm) you can set them to TRUE or FALSE (it seems to be case sensitive ?!). More properties are available into the MSDN documentation.