SharePoint empty columns don't exist in Power Apps collection's records anymore

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Posted on by R3dKap

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Hi all,

Here is the use case:

You have a SharePoint list myList with a custom text column myTextCol
You create an item leaving the myTextCol column blank

You go to Power Apps and create a new application that connects to that list. You add a button to the application that does a CearCollect(myCol, myList) in its OnSelect property.

Now look at the only record of the collection myCol: the column myTextCol is not there!?! Don't look at the collection as a whole, Look at the individual record to see that the columnm is missing. Records in Power Apps collections that have empty values in some of their columns see these columns disappear from their structure. Which means that in the same collection you can have different records with different structures!!!

And the real pain with this is that if you try to Patch the record of myCol to set its myTextCol a value, it won't work since the colummn is not there! 😫

Anyone has reported this the support? If that is the case, could you please provide here the case number please?

Thanks,

Emmanuel

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Building Power Apps

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WarrenBelz 154,447 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @R3dKap ,
What do you refer to as a Custom Text Column in SharePoint?

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v-siky-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @R3dKap ,

Once you do any modifications on SharePoint list, don't forget to refresh the SharePoint connection in your App.

Hope this helps

Sik

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PaulD1 2,914 on at

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Just a thought - do you have 'Explicit Column Selection' turned on in the Advanced Settings?

If so PowerApps will make a (very bad) guess at which columns you are interested in and only fetch those columns.

I'm not sure exactly how PA decides which columns to include/exclude but the method was changed back in November 2019 - I know this because it broke a bunch of my production Apps. Previously if you 'collected' from a datasource and then referenced a column from the collection, Explicit Column Selection would make sure that column was retrieved, after Nov 2019 it only seemed to fetch in columns if they were directly referenced in the App.

If you want the performance boost of not fetching columns you don't need, use ShowColumns to specify just the columns you do want and make sure 'Explicit Column Selection' is turned off.

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WarrenBelz 154,447 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Thanks @PaulD1 for your insight as I have not struck this issue before.
This makes @R3dKap 's answer even more interesting.

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R3dKap 1,594 on at

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Thank you all for your different feedbacks...
@v-siky-msft, during my initial tests I tried to do a refresh inside the app and reload the collection but it doesn't work. The empy columns are still inexistant.
@PaulD1, same... During my tests I tried disabling that parameters whih had no effects at all on the result (all connectors are not compatible with this parameter... I wonder how you even know which ones are).
Support tried to call me today but I missed the call. I'll keep you guys up to date if anything changes...
Have a nice day all,
Emmanuel

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R3dKap 1,594 on at

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Here is the latest update on this issue...
Support team called me yesterday and a ticket has been opened. I made a screen recording to show the issue and provided the support with a detailed explanation of the problem.
Support came back to me today saying that the issue has been escalated to the backend team.
I'll let know how this goes... And if you want to watch the recording to see how it looks, here it is: ClearCollect BlankFields 2020-04-28 17-11-17.mkv
Has anyone noticed this behavior? No one has been disturbed in its developments so far 'cause of this?
R3dKap

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PaulD1 2,914 on at

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Thanks for the update @R3dKap . I have not noticed this in my current projects but I try to avoid developing against SharePoint (it never works out well in my experience) and increasingly try to avoid PowerApps altogether due in no small part to the number of strange and random issues/bugs that we seem to regularly encounter.

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