SharePoint 2010 - My Site fields missing in edit My Profile

Today I encountered a strange problem. I was configuring My Site fields for a customer. I told SharePoint to show some fields, such as department, in the edit My Profile screen.

The department only never appeared in the edit My Profile screen while I the following settings were applied:

I got a little bit annoyed. The setting said ‘Show on the Edit Details page’. So why does it not appear? I selected ‘Allow users to edit values for this property’. The department field appeared! But I don’t want users to edit the value (no point because it will be overwritten by the Active Directory).

I suddenly realized that the user profile did not contain a value for department! So I added a department to the user profile and now the department appeared! So always make sure the profile of the user actually contain certain values (department X, title Y).

Posted in: SharePoint 2010, Social