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Difference between Choice and Lookup fields in SharePoint

When you have to provide users an option of selecting a value from a list, you can go for a Choice field or a Lookup field. Have you ever wondered which one to use and when? Which option should be chosen over other? To address these questions, one need to understand the differences between these two data types in SharePoint. This post outlines these differences to help users decide the appropriate column type based on their needs.

FactorChoiceLookup
PermissionTo add values to a Choice field, you need minimum Design permissionTo add values to a Lookup field, you need minimum Contribute/Add permission
Changing existing ValuesIf you change a value in a Choice field, it does not affect the existing values. For example, let us say one of the values was NY and there are items with this value. If you change it to New York in the field schema, it only affects the new values. All existing values will retain NY.If you change a value in a Lookup field, all the existing rows reflect the new value, as basically the lookup values are stored based on index, not text value.
UI ControlIn case of a Choice field, you get an option to choose a control such as Radio, Drop-Down, or CheckboxIn case of a Lookup field, you would get only Drop-Down
Allow Fill-inIn a Choice field, you can allow users to input additional textIn a Lookup field, there is no such option
Column ValidationIn a Choice field, you can add Out-of-the box column validationIn a Lookup field, there is no such option
Default ValueIn a Choice field, you can set Default valueIn a Lookup field, there is no such option
Additional fieldsIn a Choice field, you can only display one column valueIn a Lookup field, you are actually creating a relationship between two Lists. You get an option to display additional columns from the Lookup List
Item level permission on ValuesNot applicable as the values are part of List schemaIn a Lookup field, values are shown only if the user has permission to the respective item in the Parent List.

With these differences, it is very clear that there are multiple factors which needs to be taken into consideration before deciding which column type to go for.
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