Please don't allow Form Cards to change order on the fly!

[audrieg]

Part of the training explains how easy it is to reorder cards and fields on forms by dragging and dropping. What's a bit counter-productive with this feature is that the cards can swap places on their own.

Therefore, please lock the order of the card/field whenever we drag and drop it to somewhere (to respect the designers instructions, and to raise the value of the drag & drop).

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/guided-learning/learning-create-first-app-powerapps/

Thank you.

[PhilD]

Using the "Show All" option is not fool-proof that's for sure. It seems to be better when you show all the cards before doing any rearranging or adding of cards but I am still getting (seemingly) random instances where cards will spontaneously rearrange themselves.

simple things like this are real deal breakers when it comes to PowerApps in our organization.

[tism]

This "feature" has been a thorn in my side.  I am doing a custom SharePoint form for a client, and every time I make certain types of changes to the form, it re-orders the fields on me, and adds an extra 30 minutes to my development time.  I agree with PhilD, this is a deal breaker and needs to be fixed!

In my case, I have sutom logic assigned to my "Y" property, only for it to be overridden by the designer, and I'm not entirely sure what triggers it.  Please see my post here for a detailed description of the issue I have been facing.

[LeonieWilliams]

I've been working on a form split into 4 tabs and the fields moving around has been driving me mad, but I have solved the problem with 2 solutions I found on here, so posting for others with the same problem.  What I did what set the Visible property on the EditForm with the variable for the first tab (General), then copied and pasted it 3 times, changing the variable to each of the other tabs. 

Here you can see my 4 tabs with the first form showing, the variable is the name of each tab.

Set the variable on both Visible for the screen and also the first form (General in this case). This ensures the form "General" appears as soon as you enter the screen, not just when you click on the tab.

 

Ok, so now you have 4 forms, how do you submit them at the same time so they enter as one row in your data?  Easy, use the Patch function.

I have 4 forms: EditForm1, EditForm2, EditForm3, EditForm4.

My data is coming from'Daily Work Sheet'

Patch('Daily Work Sheet',Defaults('Daily Work Sheet'),EditForm1.Updates,EditForm2.Updates);Navigate(BrowseScreen1,ScreenTransition.None)

I added the navigation so the form returns back to the first BrowseScreen.

Hope that helps.

[EricLee]

There also seems to be rearranging going on when a fields Visable setting is changed by an IF statement.

When the IF statement is enacted (via ALT key Edit in PowerApps) and visibility of fields change the DataSource fields pane for the form rearrange. At this point clicking on different fields/data cards in the app builder pane (center pane) will change the order of cards in data source. For example clicking on the form it’s self gives one order, while clicking on the condition field of the if statement give a different order. 

In addition this situation will sometime prevent moving of fields in DataSource pane.

We need a way to have the order of the cards remain the same despite Visible (true/false results in formulas). Showing and hiding fields based on conditions is a key element of an efficient business form/app. As it is now, no amount of rearranging field will produce consistent results for users. 

[Gargoolgala]

EricLee,

as seems to be normal in PA you need to be creative to achieve your goal.  What I do is not make the card visible/invisible but instead I group the internals of the card and make the group visible/invisible which always keeps the card visible - do not use borders on the card and it becomes "invisible"

[EricLee]

I have found a work around for this... I am still using my visability as described above... however, rather than arranging the items in the DataSource>Edit Fields> Fields Pane (by dragging and droppting or using move up/down... which is wildly inconsisitand in working and continues to rearrange on it's own)... What I have done is edit the Y property in each card... changing this value allows me to put all of the fields in the order I want and they stay there. Thanks for the ideas.

[davidsemitekol]

I have found no work around for this, and in fact, I think I found a few bugs.  My data cards keep rearranging themselves and they do so on a consistent basis.  When I edit the X Y coordinates, they still rearrange themselves.  I am using a formula in the visible to show/hide data cards when you click on a button.  However, there seems to be no logic on why the cards keep rearranging themselves.  I am working from the top down in the data form by setting each data card's X Y coordinate.  As soon as I go to change the size of a data card halfway down the form, the data cards reset themselves and I have to start all over.

[PhilD]

Years later and I "rediscovered" this problem. It has been so long that I literally forgot that this simple thing doesn't work properly. I went ahead and built a slick menu with progress bar to cycle through cards but the whole thing is rendered useless because I would have to accept that the cards will show up in a different order every time. I guess it is my own fault for forgetting that this simple functionality does not work.

As mentioned by others, trying to set the X and Y on each card is futile (especially when you have around 80 fields). Another back to the drawing board moment and another unusable app...