How to promote InfoPath field to the SharePoint link type field

Special thanks: Karl D. Swartzendruber: cruelest boss of all

From time to time I’m getting into situations where InfoPath and/or SharePoint limitations don’t allow me to implement what I’ve been tasked to do. Like in that case when my cruel bosses were mercilessly cracking whip on me disregarding my whining about damn limitations preventing me to promote InfoPath field to the SharePoint link type field. As I was told, “Without beautiful icon (link type field can be represented as an icon, neat eh?) my users might fail to distinguish one type of announcement from another”.

That means it’s a hack time!

1. In InfoPath create richtext type field “MyIcon”. The value of the “MyIcon” field should look like:

http://yourlink , Description
Note these spaces from both sides of the comma.

2. Promote it to the new library column of the same name.

3. Delete the column you’ve just created.

4. Create link type column with “MyIcon” name.