Hi,

Lists have a titleField: https://www.labkey.org/wiki/home/Documentation/page.view?name=editListDesign.

You can also add some xml to the list. The titleColumn tells what is displayed: https://www.labkey.org/download/schema-docs/xml-schemas/schemas/tableInfo_xsd/elements/titleColumn.html

e.g.

<ns:tables xmlns:ns="http://labkey.org/data/xml">
  <ns:table tableName="People" tableDbType="NOT_IN_DB">
    <ns:titleColumn>Gender</ns:titleColumn>
  </ns:table>
</ns:tables>

If you specify a title field using the UI and in XML metadata, I believe the XML gets precedence (at least that was the case from my quick test).

"the box next to abc is the only one checked, sometimes the dataset displays the list's key column. Sometimes it displays a different column." - if there is no value in the title field, it shows up like: <1> where 1 is the PK value. Maybe that's what's happening?