Control is visible but acts like it's hidden, visible property evaluates inconsistently

[megan_poppe]

I have a flexible-height gallery where the visible property of some controls is based on a separate, boolean field called Expanded. Everything works fine when Expanded is false; the controls are all hidden, as they should be. The problem comes in when Expanded is true. The controls become visible, but only in the most literal sense: I can see them, but in all other ways, they act like hidden controls. They can only be selected from the tree on the left, not by clicking on them in the app. Also, if I go into the formula bar on another control that references one of my problem children, the name of the control is highlighted/underlined in the formula, but no colored box appears around the control on the screen.

The control I've been using as my test subject is called lbl_Region_SurveyGallery. I put another label on the screen so I could see what value PowerApps had for lbl_Region_SurveyGallery.Visible, and the text that displays says the property is true. However, if I click into the formula bar, what I call the formula help text (I don't know the correct term, sorry) tells me the visible property is false, and the outline that usually appears around a referenced control doesn't show up.

I also stuck a checkbox into the gallery just so I could see what value the collection had for Expanded, and the box is checked, so I know the value in Expanded really is true.

The source data is a SharePoint list that's added to a collection, with the Expanded field tacked on by way of AddColumns(). That part seems to be working fine. If I look in the collection, the field is being correctly set as true or false.

Expanded is true in the collection:

Things I've tried, none of which worked:

• Restoring back to a prior version that I know worked
• Moving the control on top of everything else in the gallery
• Moving the gallery on top of everything else on the screen
• Saving, closing the app and browser window, and re-opening
• Resetting the gallery
• Deleting all controls in the gallery except the test control
• Manually setting the gallery's template size to 400, way bigger than needed to encompass the test control

I'm pretty sure this problem started somewhere in the last week of December or the first week of January. I say that because everything was fine when I left work on 22 December, and everything was very much not fine when I opened the app up on 5 January to keep working on it. There are no other owners of the app who might have broken something while I was out. 🙂

[AmDev]

Hi @megan_poppe 

That is very strange - the only way I was able to replicate this was by setting the Gallery Template Size to 1 and the controls in the top row of the Gallery are hidden (say top row expanded = false, so all controls are hidden, but there is still a row there in the background) - then I have shown controls in row 2, where expanded = true. Due to the fact this is not in the template row, it results in no green selector outline, false for visibility and no ability to select the control directly on the Gallery, only via the tree - And as the template row is 1 high, it looks like you are selecting that control, but in actual fact you are selecting the control on teh top row, which just happens to be hidden overlayed on the label in row 2.

It was a stretch to achieve this and your app was fine before, so I suspect your Gallery is not configured like this, but hopefully there may be something in here to help you resolve it.

Good luck!

[megan_poppe]

Oddly enough, the top row of my gallery is always visible. The app has a list of items people need to review. The gallery defaults to a collapsed view, with only the title of each item visible, so users can skim the list quickly.

Then users can click the arrow next to whichever item they want to review. That sets ThisItem.Expanded to true, making the remaining controls visible for that item. There are also expand all/collapse all buttons above the gallery, which sent the Expanded field for all items.

I tried manually setting the template height of the gallery to something I knew would be big enough to show all the controls. It ends up looking like this in the editor, without any overlapping controls.

In doing that, I've realized that the dynamic template height is a holdover from an earlier version of the app and I don't need it anymore, but either way, I still have the issue. It works when the app plays, it's just trying to interact with the conditionally visible controls in the editor where the problems come in. That's when the screaming (or sobbing, depending on the day) starts.