My App is treating my SharePoint List field like it recognizes it, but something seems wrong

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Posted on by Greg27

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I have a Power App that uses a DropDown. I populate the DropDown with the contents of a SharePoint List. Everything was working fine until I added 2 additional fields. Here is the part of the List that I populate the DropDown with:

Here is the par of my SharePoint List for my app:

My app origially only included AdminAssistant and AdminAssistantEmail and not AdminAssistant-2 and AdminsAssistantEmail-2. I added those field later. So, not, in the AdminAssistant-2 and AdminAssistantEmail-2, I set the Update functions of all 4 fields to be the following:

AdminAssistant dd_DataCardValue18.Selected.AdminAssistant
AdminAssistantEmail dd_DataCardValue18.Selected.AdminAssistantEmail
AdminAssistant-2 dd_DataCardValue18.Selected.AdminAssistant-2

AdminAsssitantEmail-2 dd_DataCardValue18.Selected.AdminAssistantEmail-2

If you notice, the '-2' is red which tells me it doesn't recognize it. When I type; "dd_DataCardValue18.Selected." these are the options that pop up:

If I select one of the 2 top options, it includes the single quotes. There is no option here the 2 fields don't include the single quotes. The code in my first 2 fields works fine. Am I missing something? How do I get the AdminsAssistant-2 and AdminAssistantEmail-2 fields to be recognized?

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WarrenBelz 155,838 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Greg27,

Firstly if you do not have special characters in your fieldname, then you do not need single quotes around references to it in Power Apps, however including quotes is perfectly valid as well. Also do not always rely on the Intellisense help - just type it in. If it is valid, Power Apps will accept it fine.

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MS.Ragavendar 7,431 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@Greg27,

Whenever we are using SharePoint as the backend which having display name and internal name.

Considering the best practice try not to use any special characters in the display name, (for e.g.,) if we are having 2 email ID's specify PrimaryAdminAssitant, SecondaryAdminAssitant this will be best practice.

As @WarrenBelz mentioned, the fields are resolved its no issue if the fields are not resolving and u are getting error with red underline then the names are not getting resolved.

✅ Please click Accept as solution if my post helped you solve your issue and help others who will face the similar issue in future.

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🏷️ Please tag me @MS.Ragavendar if you still have any queries related to the solution or issue persists.

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Power Platform 1919 2,254 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Greg27,
Just adding to the responses from @WarrenBelz and @MS.Ragavendar.

In Power Apps,
single quotes are required around a column name when the name contains special characters or spaces. In your case, the hyphen - in the SharePoint column names AdminAssistant-2 and AdminAssistantEmail-2 is interpreted by Power Apps as a minus operator, not as part of the column name.

For example,

when you write AdminAssistant-2 without quotes, Power Apps evaluates it as “AdminAssistant minus 2”, rather than as a field name. Because of this, Power Apps cannot treat AdminAssistant-2 as a valid column identifier unless you clearly indicate that it is a column name. This is done by wrapping the entire name in single quotes, such as 'AdminAssistant-2'.

Column names that do not contain special characters, like AdminAssistant or AdminAssistantEmail, follow standard identifier rules and therefore do not require quotes.

This behavior is expected and not an error in your app. Power Apps consistently enforces this rule for column names that include hyphens, spaces, leading numbers, or other non-standard characters.

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WarrenBelz 155,838 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Greg27,

A quick follow-up to see if you received the answer you were looking for. Happy to assist further if not.

Please ✅ Does this answer your question if my post helped you solve your issue. This will help others find it more readily. It also closes the item. If the content was useful in other ways, please consider answering Yes to Was this reply helpful? or give it a Like ♥
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