Saving Lookup Field Populated from Collection

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Posted on by senna

217 Season of Giving Solutions 2025

I have a canvas app and a SP list, on the list is a Lookup field to another list.

The problem i am having is getting the value to come from a collection and save to the Lookup field;

ClearCollect(
 myTemplate,
 ThisItem.'Grade Name'.Value, //Lookup field 
);

I have this in the update for the lookup field;

{Value:DataCardValue1.Selected.'Grade Name',
Id:
LookUp('Grades & Grade Names','Grade Name' = DataCardValue1.Selected.'Grade Name').ID

}

If the user just selects a value this will work and save, however if the field value gets populated from the collection then nothing saves.

This is the DefaultSelectedItems

Last(FirstN(myTemplate, 1))

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WarrenBelz 156,750 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @CiaranCampbell ,

Your DefaultSelecteditems is the issue - you are missing the Id field in your collection - I am not sure why you are using a Collection here but it should simply be the target field

ThisItem.'Grade Name'

Also your Items could much easier be

Choices(SPListName.'Grade Name')

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senna 217 Season of Giving Solutions 2025 on at

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Hi @WarrenBelz
I'm using a collection as the users want a way to populate all/some fields based on a previous submission, so i let them choose what submission and save all the values from it to a collection to populate the blank form.
I have removed the .Value, thanks

In my Items i have this;

Filter('Grades & Grade Names',Grade.Value=DataCardValue58.Selected.Value)

This is so the user can filter the lookup field as it is a large amount of values

"'Grades & Grade Names'" is the name of the list the lookup references.
Unfortunately I'm stuck here with the functionality working if the user simply selects something from the dropdown but not if the value is coming from the collection

EDIT: Just to further complicate it, if i remove .Value from my clear collection, then i get [ojbect][object] and not the value displayed on the form
WarrenBelz 156,750 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@CiaranCampbell ,

This would be far easier if you did not use Lookup columns (I never use them) as they are generally unnecessary unless you want to use them directly in SharePoint Edit in grid view. You could do exactly what you are doing here with the collection and simply write the output back to a Text field.

Before I do anything here, can you please consider this structure as the alternative gets quite complex, in particular I am struggling with how your collection can contain one record

ClearCollect( myTemplate, ThisItem.'Grade Name'.Value, //Lookup field );
senna 217 Season of Giving Solutions 2025 on at

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Thanks @WarrenBelz
Understand the reluctance to use Lookups and this is probably a good example why people don't, but the reason for us using a lookup is its a list of grades than will need to be updated regularly as new ones are added and old ones are removed, it will also be used by a few different apps so having a centralized list just for this data was seen as a good solution.
Regarding the collection, there is about 50 items, i just removed the rest to keep it tidy for the example code
WarrenBelz 156,750 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @CiaranCampbell ,

The point about the lookup column was you can do the same thing in Power Apps by simply having the Items of the drop-down directly pointing at the other list field instead of the lookup field. If you still need the collection, keep it, but make the Items

Choices( YourSPListName.'Grade Name' )

and the Id will be there to Patch.

Please click Accept as solution 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 giving it Thumbs Up.

MVP (Business Applications) Visit my blog Practical Power Apps