Answered

Dependant dropdown issue.

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Goodday all,
I have a powerapp with a Name , Timeloss These 2 dropdowns are irrelevant for this question. The other dropdowns are relevant.
See ERD/Powerapp below.
I have written placeholders in the place off sensitive data.

PowerApp:

Reason id's are dependent on the category infront of it.

ERD:

I can't seem to get the reason id correct.
in this instance reason_category_2 and _3 are empty and when empty instead of giving the reason id it gives a 1.
Any way to be garantueed to get the correct id? I am so confused by some of this.
There are no duplicate rows. See table example data:

Bassicly what i'd need is to be able to base 1 dropdown off 5 others somehow. Kind of like a hierarchy as seen below. If i would be able to make 1 dropdown with these 5 values i could depend the reasons_id on this one hierarchy dropdown.

budget_cat
 budget_subcat
 reason_cat1
 reason_cat2
 reason_cat3

Categories:

Building Power Apps

All responses (21)

Answers (1)

Sort by

BCBuizer 22,854 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @Anonymous ,

Please set the AllowEmptySelection property of the drop down to true. If set to false, the first item will be selected when the Default is blank.
Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi, I see i forgot to point out one big thing. The dropdown for Reason_id is temperary for bug testing.
I want the outcome to be the reason_id of selected reasons. This doesn't fix that sadly. Still something i did need to enable. I just need a datapoint which shows the reason_id's outcome depending on all category choices.
It should only be giving one reason_id as outcome.

See table example. If i select reason_id 8 for instance it would come out with:
8 Commercial, Other Commercial, BLANK, BLANK, BLANK
I want to do the exact opposite.
I want to fill in Commercial, Other Commercial, BLANK, BLANK, BLANK
And get 8 as an outcome.
BCBuizer 22,854 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

Like
a
(1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
Hi @Anonymous ,

If I understand correctly, you want the ID of the hierarchically lowest category that is not blank, correct?

In case you have five dropdowns, you can use the Coalesce function for that:

Coalesce( drdReason_cat3.Selected.Value, drdReason_cat2.Selected.Value, drdReason_cat1.Selected.Value )
Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

@BCBuizer Thank you for explaining my problem perfectly. I could not find a good way of wording it.
Coalesce(
reason_category3_dropdown.Selected.Value,
reason_category2_dropdown.Selected.Value,
reason_category1_dropdown.Selected.Value
)

Which form/input etc. should i use to put this formula in to get the value needed? I think the error is with me trying to use this inside of a dropdown list.

This gives me an error that i am not propperly using Coalesce.
The dropdowns which can be blanked are called by those names.
BCBuizer 22,854 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @Anonymous ,

You can use this wherever you need this value. You didn't specify where you need this value.

For now you can add it to the Text property of a TextLabel so you can see the outcome during testing.
Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
I tried that. It gives the same error. Am i doing anything wrong in my code?
Coalesce( reason_category3_dropdown.Selected.Value, reason_category2_dropdown.Selected.Value, reason_category1_dropdown.Selected.Value )
BCBuizer 22,854 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @Anonymous ,

What is the error message(s) you receive?
Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Very basic error saying im not putting through the correct arguments into Coalesce
Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

I will be unavailable for awhile. Thanks alot for your help i will accept your solution if i can get Coalesce to work. Possible Coalesce can't work based on selected dropdown value? I don't know. If u find anything let me know. Thanks anyways.
BCBuizer 22,854 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @Anonymous ,

I ran a quick test without issues:

Can you share a similar screenshot of your app, with the cursor in the formula bar?