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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Apps / Reusing form.DataSourc...
Power Apps
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Reusing form.DataSource to make maintenance/Duplication of apps easier

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Posted on by Microsoft Employee

I'm prototyping an app where there are forms on multiple screens.
When changing the data source, I seem to need to go into every single one of the form settings, and manually change the name of the DataSource.
This is very repetitive and I'm sure there's a better way to do it.

Current system:

Powerapp has ListA from SharePointSite Alpha as a Data Source
Every form in the app has a hardcoded DataSource field : 'List1'
If I want to change to List2, I need to go in to all those forms and change List1 to List2

System I've tried and doesn't work:
Powerapp has List1 from SharePointSite Alpha as a Data Source
On 'settings' screen, a form named '_DataSourceAlpha' has 'List1' as a DataSource field

Every other form in the app has _DataSourceAlpha.DataSource has their DataSource field.
If I want to change to List2, I just need to change the source in _DataSourceAlpha and all other forms cascade from there.


Except PowerApps doesn't like that, and doesn't seem to allow refering to form.DataSource.

Are there other suggestions to avoid needing to change every form data entry manually

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  • Verified answer
    timl Profile Picture
    37,212 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

    @Anonymous 

    Unfortunately as far as I know, there is no easy way to do this.

    The ideal way would be for Power Apps to add the ability to store a datasource reference in a variable, and there's a post in the ideas forum about this feature.

    https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Global-variable-to-store-data-source/idi-p/780881

     

    The "pro-dev" approach to this would be to extract the source of the canvas app, and to use the find/replace options in VS Code, which would make this type of task easier.

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    Microsoft Employee on at

    Well.... I guess it's gonna be find/replace until MS fixes this........

    Thanks for the answer.

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