Adding columns in the middle of the table broke EnumList columns

[SITECH_Mid-Cana]

I get the weirdest problems.

I have a table Rental Requests. The first x number of columns gather information such as company, phone number, dates, etc. The magic happens in the last few columns. I have a column called Product type EnumList. It contains rental products. after the Product column I have an empty column type Show, Category Page_Header with a show If expression. Next column is a Rental Product name which is Enum List with a list of accessories. I have this Empty Column, Rental Product Name repeating for a number of products. Depending on what Product is selected in the Product column EnumList only the relevant Product Names show up so I can select a list of accessories for each.

Everything worked great UNTIL I added a few columns in my table before the Product column. I regenerated structure and everything looked normal. Until you create a form. What happens is a EnumList from Product Name1 got shifted to Product Name2. For example lets say I have a Product Name 1 is Skies it would have EnumList Poles, Helmet. Product Name2 Snowboard, It would have EnumList SnowBoard Shoes, Life Insurance. When I go to create a form, Skies no longer exists and Snowboard has Poles, Helmet.

Is there a way to fix it other then starting from scratch and recreating EnumLists for all products?

[Marc_Dillon]

Screenshots please!

Let’s see the backend (Google?) sheet, the column definitions, how it looks in the form view in the app showing exactly where it is going wrong.

[SITECH_Mid-Cana]

in the last image Base/Rover Kit has a list of accessories that belong to Robatic Total Station

[Markus_Malessa]

I think you are referring to adding a column to your backend table (Google Sheets - inserting a column, or SQL DB - adding a column to the table), then regenerating the structure on the Appsheet Data-Columns. It seems to essentially loose track of which columns you had set as an Enum and basically wipes it from your app structure.

If that is your case I don’t believe there is a way to undo that. You could try undo in Appsheet but that would probably also erase your regenerating the structure of the table.

[SITECH_Mid-Cana]

Thats exactly it. I am hoping there is fix for that. Its kinda odd that Appsheet attaches Enum List to a columnt number and not the column name.

[Marc_Dillon · Accepted solution]

It appears that the EnumList for Robotic is displayed correctly for the Robotic column, but it is under the wrong Show column/Page Header. I imagine this is due to the fact that your Show columns don’t have names in the sheet, and so are assigned generic names in Appsheet with their column numbers, which got shifted around when you added new columns before them, giving all of them new names. I’m guessing you have a slice, or column order defined in the form, that just needs adjusted to handle the new names.

You can change a column name in Appsheet, and in the backend, and Save and all will be good(ish). Or you can modify the column structure and regenerate. But if you try to do both at the same time, which you’ve essentially done here although unintentionally, then things will get messed up.

[SITECH_Mid-Cana]

you are a genious. I think you are correct. I will go and change names and see what happens

[SITECH_Mid-Cana]

Yep, That worked. If only I finished reading your msg before rushing to fix it… I named my empty columnst in the parent table page1, page2, etc. and then regenerated. That fixed the order of things but changed PageX columns type to text and wiped my show if formulas. I should have just changed the names of the columns in the app to correspond to correct column numbers in the table. Oh well… Live and learn.

[Marc_Dillon]

You can always revert to an old version of the app if you make such a mistake.

[SITECH_Mid-Cana]

Nice, you saved the day twice! Thanks for that.