How can we exclude a specific column from the SharePoint Get Items call?

[bhoomesh-spe]

What type of issue is this?

Question

What SharePoint development model, framework, SDK or API is this about?

💥 SharePoint Framework

Target SharePoint environment

SharePoint Online

What browser(s) / client(s) have you tested

• 💥 Internet Explorer
• 💥 Microsoft Edge
• 💥 Google Chrome
• 💥 FireFox
• 💥 Safari
• mobile (iOS/iPadOS)
• mobile (Android)
• not applicable
• other (enter in the "Additional environment details" area below)

Additional environment details

• browser version - 47.0.7727.56
• SPFx version - 1.21.1
• Node.js version - 22.14.0
• PnP JS - 4.17.0

Issue description

We have created a SharePoint site collection and a SharePoint list named “My List Data” with multiple columns configured as per our requirements.

We also developed an SPFx project for customization and implemented the following code to retrieve data from this SharePoint list.

import { spfi, SPFI, SPFx } from '@pnp/sp';
import '@pnp/sp/items';
import '@pnp/sp/lists';
import '@pnp/sp/webs';


const sp: SPFI = getSP();
const listData = await sp.web.lists.getByTitle("My List Data").items.select("*").top(5000);
console.log("listData:", listData);

Due to the large number of columns and the high volume of data, it is impacting the overall performance.

We have tried to investigate at our end and found that the performace aafect due to multiline text column which contains large amount of data

Therefore, we need to exclude the multiline text column from the Get Items call. Since the list contains more than 50 columns, we will need to explicitly specify each required column in the Select query instead of using select("*").

Is there a way to exclude only the multiline text column from the Get Items call without having to explicitly list all other columns?

Thanks

[Adam-it]

From what I know, there is no exclude way/filter when getting items using SP REST or PnPjs.
What you could do is first query all the non hidden columns in the list and get all that are 'note' type and dynamicall create a string with a list of all columns which are not note, to avoid getting multiline text columns, and then pass this string select(...) in the get API call

[bhoomesh-spe]

@Adam-it - Thanks for the response.
As mentioned in the question, we have 50+ columns in the SharePoint list. So, we need to add all columns names except the multiline text column in the select(...).
Is there a way to exclude only the multiline text column from the Get Items call without having to explicitly list all other columns?

[Ashlesha-MSFT]

@bhoomesh-spe,

Given the large number of columns, manually listing all required fields isn't practical. A common workaround is to dynamically build the select query:

1. First, fetch the list field metadata
2. Filter out unwanted field types (e.g., fields where TypeAsString === "Note" for multiline text)
3. Construct the .select() using the remaining field internal names

This approach avoids retrieving large multiline text columns while keeping the implementation maintainable, even for lists with many fields.

If this sounds like the right direction. let me know!