Form resizing constantly and changing orders of cards

[ValeriaBreve]

Hi,

I am getting crazy with 1 form where I have literally over 100 cards. Power App keeps resizing my cards and changing their order.

I did check off the "snap to columns" option, after I tried increasing the number of columns to 12 - not good for my needs, I have too much variety of number and type of cards by row.

Then I do as Microsoft recommends, pressing Shift + Ctrl after I start to resize. And still, Power App keeps moving stuff around and changing the width of cards. Widthfit property is off for all cards.

Does any of you know how I can make this stop? I am wasting hours to try and get this right.

Thanks!

Kind regards

Valeria

[Mike2500]

The sad reality is that Power Apps forms seems like they were built to handle somewhere between 2 and 12 fields. Since it was released, support has improved, but it still can be pretty maddening to work with large forms. I'd suggest breaking your form up across multiple forms/screens, or abandoning forms altogether and replacing it with multiple screens with individual controls and a patch statement.

If you stick with the current strategy, what has helped me when working with large forms are breathing exercises, calm music, and having my dog nearby.

[ValeriaBreve]

😂I am coming from Sharepoint and Infopath. Now that the business has seen all the logic possibilities with PowerApp, I was asked to add even more fields to it.... I like the flexibility of the form of being able to change multiple fields at the same time (which is almost always the case) and only send over once to Sharepoint - I don't know but since beg. of the year I receive more frequently than I would like the "throttled out error" from Sharepoint, so I guess sending only once will help instead of patching multiple times. (but maybe I am wrong???). Anyway, then I will stick with the form for now (I already separated it in "tabs" based on visible property + buttons to collapse sections) and start my breathing exercises (and add a big cup of tea?). And hope Microsoft will listen and help us out here :-). Thanks!

[Mike2500]

Yes, InfoPath handled this far better.

Not trying to talk you out of your tabs/visibility solution, which is certainly nice, but if you have multiple forms, you can still submit them all at once:

Patch('my list', Defaults('my list'), Form1.Updates, Form2.Updates, Form3.Updates)

One potential gotcha to know about with the above: Just in case you have the same field appear on two different forms, whichever form is submitted last will "win". Otherwise, this works pretty well. (InfoPath handled this duplicate field issue just fine). 

Don't know about the throttled issue, that shouldn't be happening. 

Otherwise, save often, as you can wind up doing things that munge your entire form (for example, don't change the size of the screen in settings, as it resets the form).

For dealing with resizing, it can work better to manually type in numbers in the property panel on the right, rather than click and drag on the card. Also, I find it helpful to add blank cards to do things like fill in the rest of a row to force a field to the next row, rather than fiddle with sizes.

[ValeriaBreve]

Thanks Mike! I will definitely keep the multiple form in mind for my next app - I do hope that the next one will have less fields though (!!!).

Anyway, yes I am doing the same: I tried resizing by typing the width manually on the property - and here PowerApp decides at one point to overwrite it with whatever it decides it's best. Using the blank cards visible based on parameters to force blank spaces - and here the same, I size them appropriately and Power App decides at one point to resize them. Very frustrating!!!! Esp. that I have put everything on what's supposed to be manual mode... Anyway thanks a lot for the suggestions! I did not know you could patch multiple forms at the same time, I have learned something today 🙂

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@ValeriaBreve 

Please don't break your forms!!  Using a patch on them to submit is breaking all of the functionality that the form will bring you...and you will despise PowerApps even more!  If you are going to separate your form into multiple forms, please watch this video first on how to do it properly without breaking it as suggested.

Also, if you are having issues with the form changing, make sure you have the snap to columns option in the form properties turned off.  This will help you a lot.

If you really want to get to be an expert on Forms - take a look at this training video on Forms Plus - Everything you ever wanted to know about EditForms.

It's a very long video, but it covers just about every aspect of forms and includes in part 3 some things you never knew were possible with forms.  The video has a table of contents to it so you can use it as reference or skip parts as needed.

I hope this is helpful for you.

[ValeriaBreve]

Hi Randy, thanks! I am definitely looking for all education I can get so I will definitely watch the videos 🙂

And yes, my snap to columns form property is off but despite this PowerApp keeps changing the card width - and yes all the cards autowidth properties are set to false. I did read as thoroughly as I could the Microsoft documentation and they seem to indicate that if you resize the cards pressing either "Alt" or "Ctrl+Shift" after starting to resize them, with "Snap to Columns" off, they should keep their size... but that's not been my experience (at least not reliably). Thanks for taking the time to help me !!! 🙂

[RandyHayes]

@ValeriaBreve 

Don't get hung up on the form interface!  It is quite "ugly" and not highly flexible.  BUT, the form functionality is a shining star of PowerApps controls!  It provides so much for you that you would spend hours or days trying to design yourself.

Take a look at the long EditForms video and part3 and you will see how the form interface is separated from the editform control and yet the form still functions properly and provides all you need.

Although the setup of such a separated interface is a bit more work to do, it is mostly all design and positioning work as opposed to writing formulas.  The formulas for such a setup are very simple, it's just getting the design how you like - but you are in full control of it.

Although PowerApps is not development, it is all design and formula building just like Excel (because it was modeled after Excel) this makes the "developer" type a little happier because you are working on Interface rather than logic.

Happy to help! 😁

[Mike2500]

Randy, I agree that patching forms is a pain, but the reality is that with large forms we have to choose between a couple of bad options. There's nothing quite like spending hours fiddling with a form (to do a task that took 2 minutes in infopath) only to have the business user request changes that require another couple hours of fiddling. So, while splitting one form into several and patching them is not good, it sets up a firewall of sorts so that you can work on one form at a time. This makes simple things like re-ordering fields much simpler. Getting rid of forms completely takes a massive amount of time to set it up, but once you've done that you have full control over layout and spacing, and future changes are much easier.