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Writing in Excel from a dropdown in PowerApps

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Posted on by ACD0236

Hi guys, just a quick question for which I haven't found the answer elsewhere...

I've got a PowerApp which is based on a Excel table stored in ODFB. It works well: when I write something in a field in the app, it gets written in the corresponding cell in the table.

But how do I do this with, say, a dropdown list or a radio button? For example, I have a "gender" field. Instead to have the user to type in "man" or "woman" or whatever (which is open to spelling errors, interpretations, different abbreviations) I would like to propose a dropdown list (or a radio button) from which to choose. But how do I get this choice to be written in the corresponding cell?

I'm new to this platform and until now I've only written some little, simple programs in Java, so I'm sorry if this is an obvious question but I really can't get this solved.

Thank you in advance, regards!

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Building Power Apps

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Hoffmanrat 23 on at

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I'm new to this also so I can't offer an in depth explanation nor guarantee that the way I have done it is the best but maybe I can set you down the right path.

In my App I have an allowed value form type and although I previously had multiple selections available which worked fine the requirement I have is better addressed as a single option.

Before you customise your form you change it to an allowed values list on the options screen. I'm showing you on a second item as the option is removed from ApprovedStatus now that it has been customised.

In the advanced settings I have linked to a table in the excel, also stored in ODFB, for Allowed Values and this is where you would have your drop down options.

As I said, I'm new too, and can understand how difficult somethings are to get to work that are probably very simple for the more experienced users. I have rarely found a direct answer or instruction for any of the things I wanted to do but I have almost always found something that sends me down a path of trial and error, hopefully this might do that for you.
ACD0236 15 on at

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Thank you very much for your answer.

Following your proposed pathway I set up a secondary table in another Excel datasheet (same file as the main data table, just different sheet) which lists the items for the dropdown menu.

I have set the AllowedValues property of the card which holds the dropdown menu as follows.

DataSourceInfo(GenderTable;DataSourceInfo.AllowedValues;"Gender")
Where GenderTable is the name of the table and Gender is the name of the column of this table which contains the options for the dropdown list.

When I try it out, though, nothing shows up. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks again, have a nice day.
ACD0236 15 on at

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Nevermind, I got it to work with items from inside the app (I realized I did not really need a specific table and could just input the dropdown list items from PowerApps Studio).

Thanks anyway, I'll mark this as solved!
akmiecik1 55 on at

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What was solution?