Datatable and boolean confusion

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Posted on by Mattw112b

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I am seeing something weird I don't understand...

I have a datatable connected to SharePoint. One column is Yes/No column.

In the datatable it has checkboxes but they are showing incorrectly, showing checked even though the values are false?

Screenshot 2021-02-02 141515.png

However if I put a fake command around the item, it actually displays correctly?

Screenshot 2021-02-02 141649.png

Any idea the right way to get the data table to work?

Thanks,

Terry

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Building Power Apps

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timl 37,229 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Mattw112IG

Unfortunately, I don't the data table control works too well with boolean values.

Perhaps @mdevaney's advice in this post about changing the boolean column to a text column and outputting a checkbox symbol might be the solution.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/how-to-handle-Boolean-value-in-Datatable/td-p/373767

If(ThisItem.'PTO Approved',"☑","☐")

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Mattw112b 1,088 on at

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Thanks this worked... but a.) I don't understand why MS doesn't fix this... seems like a big mistake b.) Still don't understand why my fake formula worked?

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RhysD 42 on at

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Hey guys, I came across this article when I was dealing with the same problem myself. I actually found that wiping out the information in the formula bar seems to resolve it altogether, that or commenting out the original information. I'm not too sure why this seems to work, but hey-ho!

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JasonSmithTBS 46 on at

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I'm having this same issue a year later! This is beyond insane that it hasn't been addressed yet.

Anyway, @RhysD , I know its been a year, but I'm hoping you might remember what you did. I'm unclear what you mean by wiping out the formula bar. Did you change something within the Text property of the column?

UPDATE: Came across other posts regarding the same issue with one elegant solution by @mdevaney to change the column to a Text content type and then conditionally set the displayed text to a checked box character using a font that has one and an unchecked font character.

The correct solution I think, and I believe it is what you discovered accidently, is to leave the column content type as Boolean and just remove or comment out the default ThisItem.Column_Name that is in the Text property of the column. Once clear, the column will properly display the checkboxes as checked and unchecked per the data!

Hope this helps someone.

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Shaguar357 221 on at

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Thank you @RhysD !! That worked for me!

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timsheehan 23 on at

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RhysD's solution of clearing the "Text" property for the column works for me as well, this should be marked as the solution rather than the workaround

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JMW-Lutron 3 on at

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I think I found a solution and I have a theory about what the issue is. I deleted the "ThisItem..." portion out of the Text function for the boolean column.

Before:

After:

My theory is that the Text property isn't used and is getting set erroneously which then overrides the boolean logic of the field and ends up putting a checkbox everywhere.

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