How do I use “Approval Status” in a Calculated Field

Question

I am trying to create a calculated field that will add the text [PEN] to the beginning of the displayed text on my Calendar when the event is still "Pending" according to its "Approval Status".

If it is approved or rejected I don't want any additional text.

I thought I could accomplish this easily enough by creating a calculated field like so:

=IF([Approval Status]="Pending","[PEN] ","")&[Title]

However, I get an error.

One or more column references are not allowed, because the columns are defined as a data type that is not supported in formulas.

I found a similar question here but no answer.

Any ideas about how I can add [PEN] to the title of my calendar items?

Thanks

Answer 1

According to this, the Approval Status field is a lookup field and not applicable for calculated fields. My approach to the issue would be to create a separate calendar view of items with a filter of Approval Status = Pending. This way, approvers can toggle between the approved and pending data and easily distiguish what needs to be approved.

Answer 2

You might try this: Create a text column and make it "hidden". Use a Designer workflow to set the value of the text column. The workflow would run both when an item is created and when it has changed. Using the workflow, you can set the text of the text column and can reference the approval status column as well as the title column.