Add additional item to Drop-down List or Combo Box

[rbu73]

I have a SharePoint list that has a 'Country' field defined as a 'Single line of text'. 

ID Country State/Republic

1   USA      New York

2   USA      Alaska

3   USA      Maine

4   Russia   Adygey

5   Russia   Altai

Within Power Apps I want a Drop-down List or Combo Box that allows a user to select 'USA' or 'Russia' when adding a new State/Republic, however, if the Country doesn't exist i.e. my user wants to add 'Canada' and the state 'Alberta', I want the user to be able to enter 'Canada' into the Drop-down list or Combo box. Can this be done?

[RandyHayes]

@rbu73 

So what is your Items property currently for the dropdown?  Is it derived from a datasource or hard-coded?

[rbu73]

It's from my datasource - Distinct(myList, Country).

[RandyHayes]

@rbu73 

So if I understand you then, you want to add other countries to the list that are not in the list?  Or, is it that you want an ability to add "Canada" and "Alberta" and then have them in the list?

There are several factors to doing what you want, so I want to be clear on what road you want to travel.

[rbu73]

Within Power Apps, when I select my drop-down (currently displays 'USA' and 'Russia') I want the user to be able to add other countries (i.e. 'Canada') to the list that are not currently in the list. Therefore, when the user selects the drop-down the user will be able to type 'Canada' as that's not in the list. I hope this makes sense.

[v-qiaqi-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @rbu73,

Do you want to add choices into the Combo Box and save it to the SP list?

Could you please share a bit more about the scenario?

Actually, you could achieve this by turning on the "Allow searching" function of a Combo Box.

Not sure how you save data to your SP list, SubmitForm() or Patch()?

1). If you use Patch()

Set the OnSelect as below:

Patch(SPList,Defaults(SPList),{Country:If(IsBlank(ComboBox1.SearchText),ComboBox1.Selected.Result,ComboBox1.SearchText)})

2). If you use SubmitForm()

 Set the Update property of the data card as below:

If(IsBlank(ComboBox1.SearchText),ComboBox1.Selected.Result,ComboBox1.SearchText)

Hope it could help.

Regards,

Qi

[rbu73]

Thanks for the info, I've turned on "Allow searching" and I can now enter a value that doesn't exist.

I'm using SubmitForm() to save the data to the SP list, however, when I change the 'Update' property of the data card I get the error: "The function 'if' has some invalid arguments"

My combo box is called 'cboArea'

Note: I've also tried the IsEmpty() function.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[RandyHayes]

@rbu73 

IsEmpty applies to records and tables.  IsBlank is what you want.

Can you tell me if anything has changed for your field?  Is it still a text field in your list?

Also, if you click in the formula that has the error, can you see if there is a part that is more red than another part, then hover over that to see what the error is?

[v-qiaqi-msft]

Hi @rbu73，

Could you please share the error message with me?

In my scenario, I add an Edit Form and replace the original TextInput corresponding to the Country column with a Combo Box. 

So I have done something modification on the new added Combo Box, please check the GIF as below:

Note that the Title column represents the Country column in your scenario.

Please check the Items property of your ComboBox to make sure that you have set it as:

Distinct(SPList,Country)

Hope it could help.

Regards,

Qi

[rbu73]

Hi @RandyHayes & @v-qiaqi-msft,

Thanks for your help. I've finally got this working using the solution above, however, it appears that the problem was my 'Area' column within SharePoint.

Originally, this column was called 'Model' and I renamed the column to 'Area' via 'Site Contents'. Within Power Apps, I then deleted my 'Model' DataCard, refreshed my SharePoint data source and added a new 'Area' DataCard. At this point I tried to configure the 'Area' DataCard but with only partial success.

After reading the comments above I suspected the problem may be in SharePoint and not Power Apps, therefore, I deleted the 'Area' column in SharePoint, created a new 'Area' column, refreshed my Power Apps data source and ran my application again. This time my combo box worked. Therefore, I can only conclude that either, I shouldn't have renamed the column or my original 'Model' column in SharePoint had become corrupt in some way when it was renamed to 'Area'.