Free placement of datacards just like in powerpoint

[DoctorJaegerX42]

Hey there,

I am really a bit upset. I autocreated a new app through a formatted, power-apps compatible excel sheet and it looked fine at first.

But what really upsets me, that I can't place and change the size of my datacards on the right side of my app freely. Just like I place objects, drawings, text and diagrams in MS PowerPoint.

That's highly unintuitive, wysiwyg would be a nice thing even though I understand, that powerapps tries to maintain a good usage for all kinds of screens i.e. mobile phones, desktops or tablets.

I know that I will use this app only on a desktop pc, so no need of flexible change of the positioning of my elements when used on a mobile phone for example.

Every time I try to change the width, height or x,y-coordinates it changes it to values according to some rule which I don't fully understand (has something to do with the set number of columns?)

It just moves things around like the famous joke about MS Word when changing the position of inserted pictures (I know that wrap-functionality 😉 ).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Addendum:

Look at this datacard here, it's obvious that it's y-coordinates start with "0", so it's relative to the other datacard. Can't I just have absolute coordinates or at least relative to the containers?

For explanation: the bigger datacards on top are good the way they are, one ofter another vertically. But those smaller datacards with only an "X" or nothing inside shall give a quick one-look-overview over the depots where the materials are stored. So I want them next to each other horizontally.

P.S.: Would it help to create another container under the one with basic data, only for the depots-datacards and a set number of colums, i.e. 5 or something?

Greetings,

Doc

[timl · Accepted solution]

Hi @DoctorJaegerX42 

I understand how frustrating this can be.

With regards to placing smaller data cards next to each other horizontally, one thing that can help is to increase the column value of the form (eg, you can set it to 12).

You can then use the designer to increase the width of the controls to either take up 12 columns (eg, the firstname and surname fields here), and in the case of where you want to add 3 data cards to a row, you can size each data card to 4 columns.

[DoctorJaegerX42]

Hi @timl, that kind of works, at least better than my tries 😉

It's still fiddly, because it's not that easy to put two data cards next to each other which are now placed under each other:

I set the forms columns to 12 and at least now I'm able to put some cards alone in a row and others next to each other.

Now I want to put the marked data card "GMS_ID" next to the one above. Drag and Drop doesn't work completely, still don't know why. So I fiddled around with the position x and y. Still didn't find out which values work, so they are next to each other but I won't give up.

P.S:

I tried my first idea to work with two forms with different amount of colums, I managed to add the second form into the maincontainer, but it's not yet connected to data. So I tried to connect it to the excel sheet on the left, but I can't even click it, at least nothing happens..... 

Addendum:

I managed to do it, you just can't simply click on the excel sheet on the left, you HAVE to use the "Add data" menu item on the top. How unintuitive is that?!? I click on "Add data" directly in the new form, the menu on the left pops up and you can't interact with it XD

Another addendum:

I found out, that my newly added form and the data cards inside don't correspond with the searched Item on the left. The first, automatically created form just works fine and shows the right data, the second form doesn't change it's values corresponding to the selected item on the left OR the searched value on the top. Pretty sure it's just a missing link or something somewhere in the additional properties of the bottom data cards. Any idea?

I think I'll compare the properties and values of the top data cards to those on the bottom. Or is it something I have to change in the form itself?

And the last addendum:

Finally, I found it out, I just copied most of the values of the first form into the second form and tada:

when I put this one into the second form:

IT WORKS! *Diabolic laughter*

Thank you so much for your help. I Think I'm good from here on. :))))