Combo box "Selected" not really selected until a person picks it

[PhilD]

This issue has been plaguing me for months in different apps.

Essentially, it is always some variation of this example...

• Combobox1 Items set to return items from SP list
• Combobox1 DefaultSelectedItems set to a specific choice from the list
• Gallery is set to Combobox1.Selected
• Gallery returns not items until the user actually manually chooses one of the values from ComboBox1 (even the item originally showing works if the user manually chooses it)

I can easily confirm this behavior by putting a label next to the combobox set to display ComboBox1.Selected. The DefaultSelectedItems shows in the combobox yet the label set to display ComboBox1.Selected remains empty until a choice is made manually.

Why is this and is there any proper workaround?

[RusselThomas]

Hi PhilD,

Just curious if your SP list just plain text values, or a choices column?  Might impact the final formula, but for now let's assume not.  From what I understand;

• ComboBox.DefaultSelectedItems is a table of records - even if it contains one item, it's still a table, not a record.
• ComboBox.SelectedItems – Initialised by DefaultSelectedItems and therafter a List of selected items resulting from user interaction 
• ComboBox.Selected is the currently selected item in the list - or the last item selected.  This is a single record, not a table.

My experience - When you set DefaultSelectedItems, the Selected property is also updated, but it's a complete record, so to use it in a filter or label formula you would need to specify the column of the record you want to reflect;

ComboBox.Selected.ColumnName

I'm surprised that your label is even getting updated using ComboBox.Selected when someone selects something, it should complain about needing text values while the result is a record?

Can you perhaps provide a screenshot or two to show what you're experiencing?

Kind regards,

RT

[v-xida-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @PhilD,

Could you please share a screenshot of your app's configuration?

Do you want to display the default selected value within the Combo box control in the Gallery control before interacting with the control?

Further, could you please show more details about the formula within the DefaultSelectedItems property of the Combo box control?

I have made a test and the issue is confirmed on my side. The DefaultSelectedItems property of the Combo box control is used to initialize selected item(s) before the user interacts with the control. In other words, the user does not interacts with the control.

But the Selected property and the SelectedItems property of the Combo box control is used to list the selected items resulting from user interaction. So if you don't manually select a value from the Combo box control, the ComboBox1.Selectd formula would return empty.

If you want to display the default selected value within the Combo box control in the Gallery control before interacting with the control, I afraid that there is no way to achieve your needs in PowerApps currently.

If you would like this feature to be added in PowerApps, please submit an idea to PowerApps Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/PowerApps-Ideas/idb-p/PowerAppsIdeas

Best regards,

Kris

[PhilD]

Thanks @v-xida-msft, you hit the nail on the head as far as what I was hoping to accomplish.

Combobox

DefaultSelectedItems

//set the default item to the item matching the ID in the URL query string parameter 
//passed in to TextInputParameterCouncilCommittee on load

[LookUp('Councils-Committees',ID=TextInputParameterCouncilCommittee.Text,CouncilCommittee)]

With this app embedded on a page, I can set the default view to show items that match the site the app is embedded on by using a URL query string parameter.

On the galleries on the first page, I work around the issue by conditionally setting the items property based on whether there is an actual selection or not. While this works, I was hoping to not have to recreate this everywhere in the app where I would like the initial value to carry through. This may be the best/only way to approach this at the moment though.

Gallery

Items

/* 
no item is actually "selected" in a combobox until a human picks it.
this means that that setting the combobox default selected items to the URL parameter will not actually set register as selected. The workaround is to filter the galleries intially by the param value in the text box, then switch to the selected value if/when an item is chosen.
*/

If(IsBlank(ComboBoxCouncilCommitteeSelection_Initial.Selected.ID), 
   Sort( // initial state
      Filter('Councils-Committees Applications',
        CouncilCommitteeID=Value(TextInputParameterCouncilCommittee.Text),
        MembershipStatus="Current",
        Role="Chair"),
   Name.DisplayName ,Ascending),
    Sort( // state when seletion is made
      Filter('Councils-Committees Applications',
        CouncilCommitteeID=ComboBoxCouncilCommitteeSelection_Initial.Selected.ID,
        MembershipStatus="Current",
        Role="Chair"),
    Name.DisplayName ,Ascending)
)

[PhilD]

Thanks again for your response.

This also means that the app I have using a ComboBox with items populated by the Office365SearchUser function has an issue because the Update property of the edit form must be set to something like ComboBox1.Selected.DisplayName. If a user edits the item but DOES NOT SELECT a person, then saves the form, the person field is wiped clean because ComboBox1.Selected is null (even though it is displaying the name of the current person in the field).

Currently I use this as a workaround to prevent one from actually erasing a name and making the field blank again which is better than wiping out the person field value every time someone edits another field on it.

Update property of datacard

If(Len(ComboBox1.Selected.DisplayName)=0,
    ThisItem.ManagerDisplayName,
    ComboBox1.Selected.DisplayName
)  

[PhilD]

Thanks @v-xida-msft

I added an idea for this here.

[ccauser]

I've played a few more hours with the system and finally figure out something that works !!! Yes I get the default items selected in the combo box now!

in short, before I had this :

- Update on the data card was /Concat(ddGeo.SelectedItems, Title, "; ")/

- my DefaultSelectedItem wasI /ForAll(Split(ThisItem.Geo, "; "), Result)/

- my 'items' on the combo was /myRefList.Title/ which contains the reference list

I changed it to

- Update, Kept the same

- my DefaultSelectedItem is now /Filter(myRefList, Title in Split(ThisItem.Geo, "; ")).Title/

- my 'items' is still the same for now, I had some issues and had changed it to /Filter(myRefList, true).Title/, but doing more test with the /myRefList.Title/ seem to work

It seems that you need somehow the same kind of 'source' between defaulselecteditems and items (here a filter on the reference list)... doesn't makes much sense to me, at the end it's a list of textual value, regardless of where they come from they are the same.... anyway that fixes the issue

I still believe there's a bug in this DefaultSelectedItem ... I've done lot of testing and could see that it should work wihout without having to do the Filter, but hey...at least now it works!!

[dude150001]

I have the same issue.  I have a form setup and have a couple combo boxes set with a 'defaultseleteditems'.  When saving I patch the data to a collection.

The issue I have is if a user leaves the combo boxes set to their default and saves, it patches a null value since the 'selected' property is actually blank.

I definitely consider this a bug.

[PhilD]

Thanks @ccauser , this really helped me a lot!

I did some testing like this a while back and I'm pretty sure this approach didn't work at that time (but of course I'm not 100% sure) but this does seem to make this work now so that's all that matters really. In any event, I'm really glad you brought it back up again and took some time to figure this out. Great work, thanks!

[ccauser]

@dude150001 

The SelectedItems is not null in my case, my last post shows that if you use the same source for your 'items' and 'defaultselecteditems' then it works perfectly. In my case I have a myRefList which is a reference table that has the list of items (column Title) I want to display (like "A", "B", "C"), and ThisItem.Geo is a field in my main form that contains the saved previously selected items (like "A; C")

My 'items' value in the form is set with /myRefList.Title/ and what I had to change to replace defaultselecteditems from /Split(ThisItem.Geo, "; ")/ to /Filter(myRefList, Title in Split(ThisItem.Geo, "; ")).Title/

In principle both returns exactly the same thing, if I had in ThisItem.Geo the following string, "A; B", I would get in the two items "A" & "B", and in both cases I would see "A" & "B" in the combobox field as the "selected" value, but in the first case, SelectedItems would be filled with 2 nulls and clicking on the combobox would show nothing highlighted, and interacting with the combobox would give weired result, like I could select "A" again, and have in the field "A", "B", "A" !!! and in the SelectedItems Null, Null, "A". But in the second case, filtering the same source with the split, I get exactly what it should be, field shows the 2 values, selected shows the 2 values, the combobox shows the right highlighted value and user interaction would work as expected.

My point on this still being a bug, is that by just entering "A" as a defaultselecteditems, as the combobox contains string, should do the right things rather than to have to filter the source to return the "A" string from the source