Blog - Recent Posts

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.

Data - How to sort by partial numbers in a text field

A challenge that we may encounter is, how can we sort a table/list of records by a number that partially appears in a field? An example of where this could occur is where we want to sort manufacturing product descriptions that contain the numeric part number, and we want to sort by the numeric portion of this text. This post describes the formula we can use to carry out this task.

Why does my model driven app not appear in the mobile app?

The iOS and Android players support both canvas and model driven apps. By default, the mobile app shows only production apps, and this post describes how to configure the mobile app to show model driven apps from all environments.

Designer - New updates to the Power Apps fixes SQL Server naming problem and adds the ability to rename connections

The Power Apps designer now fixes a problem that relates to the new SQL Server naming convention, and it also includes the ability to rename custom connectors and 'action connectors' from an app. This post describes these two new features.

Why doesn't the BeginWith, EndsWith, and Contains operators work as expected?

The code completion suggestions in the formula bar can be confusing. In particular, the usage of the BeginsWith, EndsWith, and Contains keywords are not entirely clear, and some app builders struggle to understand how to carry out the required string comparisons. This post describes this behaviour, including the correct syntax to carry out these operations.

Data - How to return the last record from a table

A common question from app builders is, how do we return the last record from a table? The reason for this question is because the Last function may not return the expected record. This post examines this behaviour and describes the most efficient way to return the last record from a table.

Data - How to create bulk test/dummy records with random values

When building apps, it's useful to be able to populate tables with dummy or test records so that we can test and see how our app behaves. This post demonstrates formula to generate multiple records with random values, and how to add those records to a table.

Bug - Excel Online (Business) connector fails to search or to filter against columns with a space in the name

When we attempt to Filter, Search, or to LookUp records based on criteria that references column names with spaces, Power Apps returns an error. This post describes this behaviour in more detail.