Blog - Recent Posts

Navigation - How to build dynamic data driven navigation, or to restrict access to screens based on data

An occasional question that I hear from app builders is - how do I build dynamic, or data driven navigation structures in Power Apps? This post describes a strategy that we can use.

SQL - How to configure case sensitive or case insensitve searches against SQL Server data sources

When we build search screens or filter data against a SQL Server data source, we may want to specify whether Power Apps carries out a case sensitive, or case insensitive search. This post describes the behaviour of case sensitivity when we search data from Power Apps.

Gallery - How to conditionally set the row background color in a gallery control

To help users more easily identify rows in gallery controls, we can conditionally highlight notable rows. This post describes how to carry out this task.

Data - Is the AddColumns function delegable?

A question that I hear on occasions is - is the AppColumns function delegable? This question often arises when app builders are unable to retrieve more than 2000 records. This post explores this behaviour in more detail.

Dates - How to get a numbered list of days or months, starting from a specified day or month

For date or scheduling diary type apps, it can be very useful to retrieve a list of days or months that begin on specific day or month. This post describes some formulas that we can use.

Controls - How to display dates in a combo box

The combo box control does not support the display of date values. This post examines this behaviour and describes a method to overcome this issue.

Microsoft announces cheaper Power Apps licensing from October 2021

Good news! Microsoft have announced that from October 2021, the licensing costs for many users could fall by half.

Troubleshooting - Where can I find a list of all known Power Apps issues?

When we encounter a bug or unexpected behaviour in Power Apps, here's where to look if we want to find out if Microsoft are aware of the problem.

How to work more quickly with Power Apps by creating browser bookmarks

If you work frequently with Power Apps, it's a good idea to create browser bookmarks to help quickly navigate to the most commonly used areas. This describes the fomrat of the URLs that we can add as bookmarks.

Search - How to filter records by month and year using a delegable expression

A common question I often see is - how do I filter a table or SharePoint list by month and year? This post describes how to carry out this task using formula that is delegable.

Validation - Enforcing minimum and maximum dates with the date picker control

When building data entry screens, it's often necessary to validate dates. Unfortunately, the date picker control contains no built-in way to specify the minimum and maximum permissible values, or other validation rules. This post describes a way to restrict the value that a user can enter through a date picker control.

NFC - How to setup and use NFC with Power Apps

Power Apps now offers the ability to read text and URL data from NFC tags. This post describes this new feature, including how to write data to an NFC tag, and how to retreive the values from a canvas app.

Data - Retrieving news/forum/blog articles with RSS

If you want to build an app that retrieves, displays, aggregates, and saves news articles, one way to acomplish this is to use RSS. This post describes how to retrieve content by using the RSS connector in Power Apps.

Controls - Restrict text input control to whole numbers only

With text input controls, there's no native way to restrict data entry to whole numbers only. This post describes a technique that we can use to limit input values to integers or whole numbers only.

Dataverse - Excel Import - How to fix Microsoft ACE OLEDB 12.0 Error

When we attempt to import an Excel spreadsheet from OneDrive to Dataverse, we may encounter a 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' error message. This post describes a fix for this issue.