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Insert character in a string field

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Posted on by 55552

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I have a table/collection in PowerApps where the strings are formatted like: WW031-231, DT031-222, etc. I would like to convert these by inserting a hyphen after the first two characters, to produce WW-031-231, DT-031-222, etc.

What is the simplest way to do this? Some combination of replace, substitute, split, LEN?

Thanks.

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Building Power Apps

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SpongYe 5,715 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Runner55552

I used Set but use what you are more comfortable with:

Set(OriginalString, "WW031-231"); Set(FirstString, Left(OriginalString, 2)); Set(SeconString, Mid(OriginalString, 3, 3)); Set(ThirdString, Right(OriginalString, Len(OriginalString) - 6)); Set( CombinedString, Concatenate(FirstString, "-", SeconString, "-", ThirdString) )

If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. Have a great day! 😊

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timl 36,634 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Runner55552

If you're looking for some formula to apply this transformation to a collection, let's say you have a collection that looks like this:

ClearCollect(colData, {Code: "WW031-231"}, {Code: "DT031-222"} )

You can call the AddColumns function to apply this transformation to the collection.

AddColumns(colData, "NewCode", With({splitStr:Split(Code, "-")}, Left(Code, 2) & "-" & Mid( First(splitStr).Value,3, Len(First(splitStr).Value)-2) & "-" & Last(splitStr).Value ) )

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55552 674 on at

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Thanks. This looks like it would work. Accepted the first suggestion above from @SpongYe as the solution, partly because it came in first, but both solutions appear to work.

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timl 36,634 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Thanks @Runner55552 - I'm glad that works for you. Please note that it's possible to select multiple posts as solutions in situations like this.

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55552 674 on at

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Thanks! Just accepted yours also. I did not know you could accept more than one solution. Also, I just tried your solution in my app and it worked well. Since some of my codes have a different format (132-2344 or 132-234), without letters at the front, I needed to wrap an If statement around the With code to check the total length of the string. If >= 9 characters, implement the With statement, else keep the original text.
I have also noticed that I cannot use AddColumns on an existing collection. It appears to add columns to a collection, I need to create a new collection. Is that correct?

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timl 36,634 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Runner55552

Thanks - that's correct - AddColumns doesn't add columns to an existing collection - it's a function that returns a table with the additional columns you specify. Therefore, you would need to Collect to a new collection, or you can do as I did in the screenshot and set the Items property of a gallery, datatable or control directly to the call to AddColumns.

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