Introduction
You may notice that a SharePoint list or library has lost it's workflow status column. A few possible reasons why you might have a missing workflow status column:
- Problem occurred while publishing the workflow
- Problem occurred when migrating the list or library
- The list or library has more lookup columns than are allowed by the "List View Lookup Threshold" setting in Central Administration
Resolution
You should review the list or library in question and compare the number of lookup columns to the configured "List View Lookup Threshold" value. If you have more lookup columns than the threshold, consider reducing the number of lookup columns in the list or library. If this is not possible, increase the threshold value as follows:
- Open Central Administration
- Navigate to Application Management > Manage Web Applications
- Click your web application
- From the ribbon select General Settings > Resource Throttling
- Locate the "List View Lookup Threshold" and increase the value to => the number of lookup columns in the problem list
- The default value for SharePoint 2016 and 2019 is 8
- Republish the workflow and run it against an item
If the workflow status column is still missing:
- Open the workflow in SharePoint Designer
- In the browser, go to the list or library in question
- Select Workflow Settings and remove all instances of the workflow
- In SharePoint Designer, click on publish to re-associate the workflow
- Run the workflow against an item
