Keep going or Abandon the project?

[Anonymous]

It has been a year since I last checked in, so I'm asking the community if there has been any development with the following:

I've been tweaking and tweaking the values of items in a flexible height canvas, the data cards, galleries, and the like, but cannot seem to get a consistent enough behavior of auto adjustable height that is consistent across different records. Content is either cut off and doesn't appear until you scroll, or larger than desired gaps above/below the content.  There doesn't seem to be a happy medium in-between. I see how solutions such as +10 in height with a formula work with content that is consistent (within a fixed or more limited range of lines). But I have content where one record might have no content and another record with multiple lines of content, so none of the mathematical formulas provide a solution that is consistent across all records. Any ideas on getting more consistent behavior across records in a scrollable canvas with different data sets, galleries, and various data cards?

Additionally, besides the adjustable height issue, is there any way to print just the canvas that is scrollable? Or is everybody still spitting out their records to HTML. Our goal is to have the scrollable canvas spit out as a PDF, but I'm not an HTML wiz, and with all the data and various tables, I can't imagine getting it to look the preferred way will be easy with HTML.

I’m at the point where I’m wondering if I should just abandon this app project altogether if the above don't have manageable workarounds or approachable solutions. 

[TheRobRush]

Once you have your font and font size nailed down, you can work out a pretty accurate co trol height formula based on the Len() of the controls text and another number, be that a max height you want or just base it off the parents height or the apps height itself. This is not something thats impossible to do, just have to play with the math for each specific font size/control width combination in the app to keep the height of each control dynamic and based on the text contained within the control

[Anonymous]

Can you please provide an example?

What about printing the canvas, as the goal here is for us to create a PDF of the content we see. 

Thank you.

[TheRobRush]

Not in office right now to type up and screen grab an example. But will tomorrow.

You can create pdfs as well, i tend to do it via powerautomate. Getting layout perfect is a pain as its all via html and getting your html exactly how the pdf likes it is more difficult than displaying in a normal website honestly. But it's doable.

[TheRobRush]

So you will need to adjust this formula based on three things. 

1. Font Choice (Type & Bold/etc)

2. Font Size

3. Width of Text Control

In this example I have a TextInput  that is 516 wide, containing Lato Font / Normal at a font size of 20

It's height property is set to

If(
RoundUp(Sum(Len(TextInput1.Text)*12.125)/517,0)
    *37<42,42,
    RoundUp(Sum(Len(TextInput1.Text)*12.125)/517,0)*37
    )

which gives me a text input that changes based on how much I have typed like so

[Anonymous]

Does this work for tables? If you look at my original screenshots I have tables that I can't seem to currently get the right formula mix. I tried the formula you provided, but get errors with the different content I put for 'TextInput1.Text'

My current formula is:

Sum(CourseContentGallery.AllItems,NoRows) * 30+10

I recall I'm using some trick as I've added an item called 'norows' which is affecting the height, but this is from over a year ago and I don't recall how I got there, but it is not working. 

[TheRobRush]

SImilar functionality can be come up with in basically any of the controls in powerapps, noticed in second picture you put PRINT without the gap. are you trying to send all this data from screen to a pdf or printer etc? If so probably best workflow would be to create a pdf via powerautomate, then you can just pass it all the variables, and have power automate create a pdf using html in the exact format you want

[Anonymous]

The larger issue is that this is a lot of acrobatics to get basic functionality going. I keep running into issues and limitations. In no particular order, the issues are: Number one, the scrollable canvas cuts off and does not auto expand every time (screenshot1). This has been mentioned in other threads and I haven't seen a 'fix' for it. Number two is the height issue (screenshot2) you responded to. This feels like a lot of acrobatics to get auto-height working. Number three, I wanted to add a bulleted list to my data, can't do that unless you bring it in as HTML others offered, but in doing so I came to find out you must have the text size set in the SharePoint list, meaning you can't have the text two different sizes in two different places, say one size for screen and another for print. Number four, I can't just print the scrollable canvas (why not print(canvas'x')), but have to export the content to HTML, forcing me to build the layout twice? So double the work. If forced to do so, ok, but I can't figure out how to spit out the content to HTML easily, with multiple tables from different SharePoint lists, that are dependent on the item selected, that all need to be formatted. Number 5, I added a print screen in the last week to explore the possibility of being forced to be stuck to a single-page output (which likely will not work for the length of my content), which revealed issue number 4 above, and added the issue of a 1" margin on the right side with no explanation, having checked everything. 

I have already problem-solved a lot, and I put a lot of effort into the app so far, and hate to dump the project, but all these issues are stacking up. I don't want to put more time in if any one of the issues above is not solvable from an approachable way, as that time could be used sourcing and working towards a solution elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Well, at least I solved the 1" margin on the right side. It seems to be that the default "portrait" screen is sized to A4. I guess this is fine, but at least tell us. Portrait (A4). 

[Anonymous]

Let's start this over. 

I've gone through the community threads, tested this and that, and this is what I've learned. 

• If you want a scrollable screen (which I do), you can't
  • Insert a Gallery or Form (officially as stated by MS due to "stability")
  • If you ignore this and add a form anyways either through a container, or another method, its max height limit is 768 px, creating cut text and a hidden scroll once it goes beyond that height.

Given these restrictions, is the expected way MS wants me to build an app is to add one or more field(s) (that would normally be part of a form) into separate sections of a scrollable screen? 

Please advise. Thank you.