Unanswered

Building a string within ForAll

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Power Pla...

I have an approval flow and I would like to display information within the approval. I have a sharepoint list full of data and I need to display each row of data in the approval flow. Ideally I would use Set() inside of ForAll() in order to build a string of the data I need and format it, but you cannot use Set() inside of ForAll()

Any ideas? Has anyone else had a similar dillema before?

Categories:

Building Power Apps

I have the same question (0)

All responses (12)

Answers (1)

Verified answer

timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (3)

Report

Hi @Anonymous

One way to work around this problem is to Collect your data into a temporary collection inside your call to the ForAll function. You can then combine the rows with the Concat function to derive your complete string.

The post that I answered here uses this exact technique. Hopefully, you'll get the gist of the formula that you would use.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Creating-Apps/Send-email-HTML-format-problem/m-p/121482#M2649

The reason why the ForAll function doesn't support the Set function is because PowerApps can execute the iterations of a ForAll loop in parallel. There's no guarantee that PowerApps will loop over the source records in order, therefore, you might need to Collect a sort value to enable you to Concat your final string in the correct sequence.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Power Pla... on at

Like (0)

Report

Thank you @timl

This solution worked very well. It would be nice to see a non concurrent ForAll implementation in the future.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
JR-BejeweledOne 5,836 Moderator on at

Like (1)

Report

I have this exact same need, but am unable to look at your solution in the other post. Is there any way you can share it here or is there another place it can be accessed?

@timl

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
mdevaney 29,989 Moderator on at

Like (1)

Report
@JR-BejeweledOne
Google Cache is your best friend in this situation...
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w2q7bAhHsg4J:https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/Building-a-string-within-ForAll/td-p/121976+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

I just typed this text string into Google

powerusers 121482#M2649
And looked at the Cached webpage instead

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
JR-BejeweledOne 5,836 Moderator on at

Like (2)

Report

I get the exact same error I get when trying to go to it from the link.

You do not have sufficient privileges for this resource or its parent to perform this action.
Click your browser's Back button to continue.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report
That's a pain that my original post no longer exists 😞

To summarise the technique, suppose you have a collection that looks like this and you want to convert this to an HTML table.

Here's the code to generate a table of results.

Collect(outputTable,"<Table>"); ForAll(Countries,
Collect(outputTable, "<tr><td>" & name & "</td></tr>")
); Collect(outputTable,"</Table>")

The result of this looks like this:

In an HTML control, you can then combine all of these rows into a single string with this:

Concat(outputTable, Value)

Hope that helps.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
JR-BejeweledOne 5,836 Moderator on at

Like (1)

Report

Thank you for this. Can you show me what the 'ForAll' line in the code would look like if I have a collection similar to below and I wanted to concat the Holiday and date together so the end result string would look like this:
Christmas Eve 12/24/2019
Christmas Day 12/25/2019

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report
Hi @JR-BejeweledOne

The formula would look like this:

Collect(outputTable,"<Table>"); ForAll(YourCollectionName, Collect(outputTable, "<tr><td>" & Name & "</td><td>" & Text(StartDate) & "</td></tr>") ); Collect(outputTable,"</Table>")

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
iskguy 402 on at

Like (0)

Report

I would love to see that solution, but it says I do not have access

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
JR-BejeweledOne 5,836 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

The solution was to go to this link and look at the solution there.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Creating-Apps/Send-email-HTML-format-problem/m-p/121482#M2649

Was this reply helpful? Yes No