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Search Via Specified Column

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Posted on by NoahJedi

Hello!

I am trying to make a PowerApp with a gallery of inventory items. I want to use the "Search" function to enable users to quickly sort data.

The search function takes in 3 arguments: the data source, a text to search for, and a column/attribute to look at when searching. I want to use a text box to fill in the second argument, and a dropdown selector to allow the user to specify which column/attribute to search by. However, when I do this, I get an error: "Expected text. We expect text at this point in the formula". I am not sure what the issue is, because I believe that my inputs to the Search function should be evaluating to text. I have even tried casting the last argument to text (second picture), but this did not work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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Building Power Apps

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timl 36,785 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @NoahJedi

It's not possible to specify a column dynamically as stated in the documention.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/power-platform/power-fx/reference/function-filter-lookup

A workaround is to call the Switch function like so:

Switch(dd_search_key.Selected.Value, "Column1", Search('Asset Manager', txt_search.text, "Column1", "Column2", Search('Asset Manager', txt_search.text, "Column2", "Column3", Search('Asset Manager', txt_search.text, "Column3" )

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NoahJedi 13 on at

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Ahhh; I see. Thank you for the workaround!

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