Combo Box pre-populated with stored values

[Marcusm]

Hi all,

I'm struggling to figure out how to populate a combo box with values that are stored in a table (currently Excel, but hopefully moving to a Dataverse table).  The scenario is:

I have a 'New' screen that contains a combo box (in an Edit form) that allows the user to select multiple values from a list of items.  That list of items is stored in an Excel table called 'Table6'.  When the user selects values and hits 'Save', the selected values are concatenated (using ";") and stored in a table called 'Table1', in column called 'Services'.  This all works fine.

The app also has an 'Edit' screen that contains a combo box (also in an Edit form).  I would like this combo box to retrieve the stored values so that the user can readily see the Services that are already associated with this customer.  The user s/b able to then select more (from the superset of items in 'Table6'), delete etc.  Selections would then be saved back to the same location in 'Table1'.

The combo box in question has Items = Table1.  Intuitively, I think I need to use DefaultSelectedItems.  And I also believe that I need to use the Split function (possibly with other functions) to get the stored values in a form that can be used in the combo box.  But I have been unsuccessful in getting this to work properly.

Do you have suggestions as to how I can accomplish this?

Thanks so much for any guidance...

[CNT]

@Marcusm Well, you've said "The app also has an 'Edit' screen"

You can't have an EditForm with Items property blank (that's why u'r getting 'no item to display'). You need to point it to the Record that you want to edit. If this is not set straight, the ComboBox will never work.

Could you please share some of u'r screens.

[Marcusm]

I tinkered and realized that the data source for the combo box needs to be Table6, which is a complete list of possible services.  The retrieved values are the services that were originally selected and are stored in the customer record in Table1.  I also made the Item property for the Edit Form itself = Gallery1.Selected.  

The result is that I no longer get the 'no item to display' error, and the combo box does show all possible services.  

I'm still left with the original problem of prepopulating the stored values for previously selected services.  Here are some screens - do these help?

[CNT]

@Marcusm You've said, "I also made the Item property for the Edit Form itself = Gallery1.Selected"

But the picture shows, the DataSource for Form3 as Table1. Could you check that please.

If Item property for the Edit Form = Gallery1.Selected, What are the field you have in Form. Send me a screen shot.

[Marcusm]

[Marcusm]

@cn here's another shot including DefaultSelectedItems for the combo box...

[CNT]

@Marcusm Please make sure that Gallery1.Selected is passing all the previously saved values to the EditForm. To test that you can just throw a label on to the screen and set the Text property to Concat(Gallery1.Selected.Services, ", "). This should show the Services for the selected record in the Gallery.

If that's all set the combobox formula we've given earlier should work.

[Marcusm]

Thanks again @CNT - I really appreciate your help on this.  I tried your suggestion in a label, using both Concat and Split.  (isn't Split what I need if I'm bringing concatenated values back into a combo box?).  But either way I'm getting an error:

However, if I use:

(Gallery1.Selected.Services)

I do see the selected services flowing into the label, with the ";" delimiter. We are SO close!

[Marcusm]

@CNT  - I do see that I'm getting a result in the Combo Box for the DefaultSelectedItems property:

However, the results still have the ";" delimiter, and they don't actually show as prepopulated in the box when I'm in preview mode (meaning if I click on the drop down arrow in the combo box, I don't see any of the values that are in the "Result" above as existing selections for the combo box)

[CNT]

@Marcusm Split returns a Single Column table. You can't display that in a Label. That's why for the test purpose we used Concat. Anyway, now that we know that some data is coming through, that's fine.

B'coz the data that's coming in is ";" delimited, use this formula,

Split(Gallery1.Selected.Services, ";")

[Marcusm]

@CNT thanks again.  I've tried that, but it still doesn't seem to prepopulate any values in the control.  I did also try to change the MultiValueDelimiter from "," to ";", but that didn't help.

What I am hoping to see is if I click in the combo box, I should see the saved selections pre-populated, something like this (I captured this by manually selecting two services in the combo box):