Why is my custom field missing from the saved search field list?

Because the field is marked Inactive. That is the exact label of a checkbox on the custom field record, and ticking it removes the field from the Criteria, Results and Available Filters dropdowns simultaneously. With Inactive unticked the field is listed in all three.

Minimal reproduction

A transaction body custom field was created for this test, Free-Form Text, script id custbody_probe_h01_storeval, and deleted afterwards. Each candidate setting was then toggled one at a time with the others held at their baseline, and after every change the three field pickers on the saved search form were re-read from the form's own dropdown objects rather than by eye:

Criteria            dropdown "filters",       column filterfilter
Results             dropdown "returnfields",  column rffield
Available Filters   dropdown "filterfields",  column fffilter

Reading them as objects rather than scanning by eye is deliberate: a miss by eye is indistinguishable from the field being absent.

Five configurations, one variable each:

A  Store Value on, Display Type NORMAL, Inactive off, Applies To Sales Order   present in all three
B  Store Value off                                                             present in all three
C  Display Type HIDDEN                                                         present
D  Inactive on                                                                 absent from all three
E  Applies To Journal only                                                     present

None of the five produced an error. They differ only in visibility, and only one of them changes it.

With Inactive ticked, the option count of every one of the three dropdowns fell back to exactly the count recorded before the field existed. Not approximately, exactly, on all three. That is as clean a confirmation as this kind of test gets: the field left the list and nothing else moved.

Store Value is not the answer

This is the reason the page exists. Store Value is the answer on essentially every forum thread about a missing custom field, and it is wrong. Configuration B had Store Value unticked and the field was still offered in all three dropdowns, and still fully usable: as a Results column, inside a formula, and as a Criteria filter.

What Store Value actually controls is whether the field returns anything once you have selected it, which is a different symptom with a different fix. That one has its own page in this section, on a custom field that is present in the search and blank on every row.

Display Type and Applies To are not the answer either

Both were tested individually rather than assumed away.

Setting Display Type to HIDDEN (configuration C) does not remove the field from the saved search pickers. What HIDDEN does to the record form was not measured here, only what it does to the search field list, which is nothing.

Restricting Applies To (configuration E, Journal only) does not remove it either. A field scoped to one transaction type is still offered on a generic Transaction search, because a Transaction search spans all types. Scoping the field does not scope the picker.

Presence in C and E was confirmed by scanning the rendered form for the field's label rather than by option count, so those two readings are slightly weaker than A, B and D. They are consistent, and in the same direction: the field stayed.

What else is on that record

The custom field form carries a cluster of settings that all read like they might govern searchability. Verbatim labels, read from the form itself at /app/common/custom/bodycustfield.nl:

Store Value      Inactive      Display Type      Show In List
Global Search    Search        Compare Type
Default Level for Search/Reporting      Level for Search/Reporting

Of these, only Store Value, Display Type and Inactive were tested, along with Applies To. The rest were left at baseline and this page makes no claim about them. The one to check is plain "Inactive".

How to tell which symptom you have

Ask one question before touching anything: is the field absent from the picker, or present in the picker and empty in the output?

Absent from the picker means Inactive. Present but blank on every row means Store Value. Two different symptoms with two different causes, and conflating them is why the forum threads go in circles.

Scope: one sandbox account on NetSuite 2026.1, Administrator role, a single purpose-made transaction body field of type Free-Form Text. The three field pickers were read from the rendered saved search form in the UI rather than from an ad hoc search, on a generic Transaction search. One field, one field type, one record type.