Cannot update a field to an empty value

[LarsDP]

In the Update function, I can't remove a given value for a colum in my sharepointlist.

For example, in my application, a laborer can assign a time value to a chosen construction site where he has worked.

If he were to edit the record and try to delete the construction site for that day, he would have to put the time value to 0.

In my Update function, I can check for the time value, but there is no function to remove the data for the construction site.

Am I overlooking something?

ANSWER: At the time of writing, you can update a textfield to an empty string, but you can not put a null value. For a numeric field, you can not update this to a null value but this will presumably be taken into account in one of the following updates.

[Meneghino]

Hi Lars, just to understand: are you trying to delete the data of a column for a specifc row (i.e. set the value to empty/blank), or are you trying to delete the entire row of a table (SP list)?  If it is the second, then you can use the Remove or RemoveIf functions.

Thanks.

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/function-remove-removeif/

[LarsDP]

I'm trying to set the value to empty, yes. Trying to Update to an empty string did not work. Is there a keyword to put a blank value to override the current value?

[Meneghino]

Whay is the column type? Numeric, string, date, date/time?  I will try to reproduce your issue.

[LarsDP]

One column is a text field (value is assigned by a dropdown) and the other column is a number (the time value for said construction site).

Thank you in advance!

[Meneghino · Accepted solution]

Hi Lars, I also cannot find a way to remove the number value.  The text value can be set to empty string no problem, but not the number value.

I think we need a Null value or something like that from the programme team.

In the meanwhile of course, in your Update function you can check for an empty input string and update the record with zero, but this is not satisfactory.

You can start an new idea with "Update a numeric field with null/empty value"

[LarsDP]

I will do this immediatly. Thank you very much for your time, you've made this clear to me as I thought I was overlooking something obvious haha. 

Hopefully the team will implement this soon!

[rgruian]

Thank you, acknowledged, and we will consider this feature for one of the upcoming releases.

[Meneghino]

hi @rgruian, is there any update on this?

just to clarify, we need to be able to update/patch any field of a source to a null value, at the moment the only thing we can do is update/patch a text field with a zer-length string (""), but this is not the same thing, we need to be able to set the text fields also to null.

in my application I am stuck with numbers in numerical fields that I have to set to zero to work around, but it does not work with look-up fields that really need a null value if you do not want to look anything up.

many thanks for a great product, and the continuous improvements that you are making.

[Meneghino]

Hello, seems that @rgruian has left the PowerApps staff.  Is anyone following up on this?

Thanks.