Drop List List

Brass Contributor

Hi

I have a form built on a SharePoint List

 

One of the items is a dropdown list with 3 options plus a "other" option.

We want the user to be given a choice to type in a answer if it not one of the 3 pre-defined options.

This work fine however...

 

If you add a type in a answer this gets added to the List and then the next time you open the form you last answer is a option in the dropdown list

 

We don't want this to happen we just want the drop down list to always have 3 options plus Other.

 

Any ideas how to do this?

 

Thanks

4 Replies

@Pn1995  While I'm sure there's a solution to your exact use case, I wonder if you can achieve what is effectively the same result with a different approach that wouldn't take as much effort to implement. What if you added some branching logic to make a new field appear in your form when Other is chosen that prompts them to type in their value?

Thanks @Matt Coats

 If we had another field added, we would want it saved back to the same field in a SharePoint list that had the drop down, so i'm not sure it would help would it?

 

Also the form already has quite a few fields so having another would add to an already crowded page

 

@Pn1995, for your ideal scenario to work, you're asking to break Choice fields. While I'm not well-versed in the what PowerApps can do to override a list's data integrity rules, I'm not sure it can do that without creating some issues for you. Your next best lead would be to see if you can use PowerApps to force a limited amount of choices in a Single Line of Text field, but someone could always move behind the PowerApps form and interact with the list directly.

 

You know your business need better than I do, but I would seriously examine the need to have all of those values in the same field. Unless PowerApps comes through with either of the solutions above, you might need to decide whether you want--integrity of your data in two fields or taking a risk in that integrity and having one field.

@Pn1995 actually, I wanted to thank you for pointing out this feature. I've never liked the choice with fill in options, because you could never really see all of the other - you'd probably have 12 different spellings of the same 'other' option. Now a user, if they need to use something not in the formal options, can at least pick the same spelling as someone else.

 

It doesn't change the actual definition of the choice field - it still has the original options you gave it. In the new/edit forms the options under the line are all the values that have been used in other items (if you clear those items up they don't show any more). Editing in quick edit mode doesn't show those 'others'.

 

I like it because now I can see what are common 'other' options and add those to the legal options.. So for me, it's a good feature. Understand if it doesn't work for everyone. I haven't tested that kind of field to see what PowerApps does to it, but I like how the standard forms work.