People Picker icon is not showing inside the built-in New & Edit forms, while it is showing inside custom New and edit forms

Question

I have a site column of type People & group inside my SharePoint 2013 team site, now inside the built-in New and Edit forms the site column will not have "People Picker" icon beside (which can allow users to select people). here is how the column looks like inside the built-in Create & Edit forms:-

while when i created a custom Edit and Create forms using share-point designer , i got the People Picker icon beside it as follow:-

here is the markup inside the custom New form regarding the Account Manager site column:-

<tr>
                        <td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-formlabel">
                            <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
                                <nobr>Account Manager<span class="ms-formvalidation"> *</span>
                                </nobr>
                            </H3>
                        </td>
                        <td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
                            <SharePoint:FormField runat="server" id="ff11{$Pos}" ControlMode="New" FieldName="Account_x0020_Manager" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('i',concat('ff11',$Pos),'Value','ValueChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID)),'@Account_x0020_Manager')}"/>
                            <SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff11description{$Pos}" FieldName="Account_x0020_Manager" ControlMode="New"/>
                        </td>
                    </tr>

so can anyone advice on how i can get the People Picker icon inside the built-in edit an New forms ?

Answer 1

In Sharepoint 2013, the person or group field no longer uses the old directory people picker. They have switched over to the autocomplete option (which however is cumbersome if you don't know what you are searching for).

The list forms by default will use this 2013 autocomplete option but if you want to use the 2010 directory people picker, just create new copies of the new and edit form using SP designer and the control will reappear as designer will force the columns to use the old people picker control.

Creating new copies of New and Edit form should not impact any existing functionality and this can be achieved in a few minutes.