External users cannot see some fields in view

We have set up a view for "emergency services" to see a list of Safety data sheets. They have their own log in but we have set up the account is an external user so we can more easily ensure they can't see internal documents. It works quite well except that they cannot see certain fields even though I have explicitly given them read access to the fields. I notice that the fields they can't see are all 'choose from list' fields whereas they can see fields that are just plain text. This should not matter as they only have read only access and won't be choosing anything but I did also try giving them access to the lists but that still does not help. When they see the view, these fields just show as "hidden".