Rich Text Editor Finicky Interface...

[tommyly]

I'm encountering a strange glitch with Rich Text Editor. Take this screenshot for example:

The option interface on the top (e.g. bold, italics, underline, etc.) are displayed correctly. As I type text into it, it initially starts to display correctly:

When I exceed the view-portion of the screen, I presume that it would throw in a scroll bar, allowing me to scroll--that is standard behavior for these types of things. And as I suspected... it does give me a scroll bar:

But note that the interface is no longer displayed (e.g. bold, italics, underline, etc.). No matter how much I scroll up or down, the interface has completely disappeared. Even if I delete everything and make the scrollbar disappear, the interface is completely gone for the entire app-session:

😞

[tommyly]

As of now, I've resorted to typing what I want in Microsoft Word--and formatting it there--then copying-and-pasting it into PowerApps's rich-tech editor to save the data into the datasource. This obviously is not an acceptable long-term solution.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of setting or property that will resolve this. It may be possibly a rendering glitch? Not sure. My guess is that the rich-text editor is still sort of beta... (?).

[tommyly]

Another piece of detail is this:

The visual glitch doesn't occur when running PowerApps natively in PowerApps-edit mode or execute mode. It only glitches when it's used as a SharePoint custom form.

[tahoon]

From the screenshots it looks like the height of the editor is taller than expected. Notice that in the very first picture before any text is entered, the grey border that is supposed to be at the bottom of the editor is not there.

What is the Width and Height of the rich text editor set to? A formula or just numbers?

Is there anything that might affect the visibility of the editor or the Form data card it is in?

A few other things to check

• See if the same issue happens on other browsers
• Enable App settings > Display > Screen size + orientation > Lock aspect ratio

[tommyly]

I thought that it was being pushed up to the top of the visible plane. So here is my rich-text editor with it shrunken down halfway. You can see the asterisk of the datacard (*) for required field in the top-right corner of the box.

And then now the formatting interface is gone, yet again... Bear in mind that this is in SharePoint custom forms.

In the PowerApps studio/editor, it has no issue:

 I don't think the aspect of ratio options are available when using PowerApps to create SharePoint custom forms.

[sonyam3]

I'm having the same issue on a customized SharePoint form. I noticed on my form that the issue occurs when a formula is added in the Visibility property. In the screenshot below, the top card's Visibility is set to true and the scrollbar/toolbar work correctly, whereas the bottom card has an IF statement in the Visibility property and the toolbar disappears when scrolling.

I also see on the bottom rich text box that the bottom border looks cut off. It always looks like that on the live form (not in PowerApps) regardless if I make it taller or shorter. 

This behavior is the same in IE and Chrome, and I'm using Windows 10.

Suggestions? I don't want to use regular text fields because they display all the HTML markup from the  SharePoint Enhanced Rich Text columns.

[tahoon]

This workaround might work.

Set the RichTextEditor height to a variable, say x. In the same place where data card visibility is changed from false to true, force the rich text editor to resize by adding these expressions: Set(x, <any number>); Set(x, <desired size>)

[sonyam3]

Thanks for the reply tahoon!

I tried changing the Visibility on the rich text's data card from:

If(DataCardValue18.Selected.Value = "Process Change", true, false)

to

If(DataCardValue18.Selected.Value = "Process Change", Set(x, 188); Set(x, 100))

But it throws an error: "Behavior function in a non-behavior property". I also tried that syntax on the Height of the rich text box itself, but got the same error.

So in my scenario:

• DataCardValue18 is a drop-down box who's choices determine what is hidden.
• DataCard5 is one of the data cards that I want to hide unless "Process Change" is chosen from DataCardValue18.
• DataCardValue6 is the rich text box inside DataCard5.
• Currently, this is the value of the Visibility property on DataCard5: 
  • If(DataCardValue18.Selected.Value = "Process Change", true, false)

I tried adding the Set(x, 188) to the OnStart property of the screen then set the Height of the rich text box to x, but the scroll behavior was the same and pushed the toolbar out of the box when adding more text than the box's height.

Where should I add the Set parameters? Thanks for the help. 🙂 

[sonyam3]

Also, apologies if I'm hijacking this thread. I figured the issue on my form was the same as tommyly's. I can create a new thread if that would be better.

[tommyly]

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@sonyam3 wrote:

Also, apologies if I'm hijacking this thread. I figured the issue on my form was the same as tommyly's. I can create a new thread if that would be better.

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It's okay. It was nice to see this thread come back up. It felt like nobody else was having the problem so I sort of just let it go. I realize PowerApps is a living, breathing sort of thing... so hopefully they will fix it if enough people have this problem.