Column Reference Question

[James_Brennan]

I am building an attendance app for different Clubs/Activities at my school. I would like the app to take in two data points from a form. 

1. Student ID
2. Teacher/Sponsor of Clubs email

I would like the for to only show a field to acquire ID#'s from students, and all other data is gathered from referenced tables. 

I can achieve most of this, but I am not sure how to make one tweak. I would like to make the Student ID field so students can type their ID numbers. Because the ID column is a Ref, AppSheet is making it a dropdown field in my form. 

How do I allow users/students the ability to type their ID#?

thanks!

[MultiTech]

A common build method will be to include two separate fields for one piece of data:

• One field for the actual data entry
  • This could by anything really
  • A common use is to activate the scanner for this data entry field
    
    
• Then have a second column, one that uses LOOKUP() or SELECT() or something to find the correct ref value based on the data entered by the user.
  • This is nice, because if someone enters something NOT in the system - you can kick off a bunch of stuff based on that, because you already know it's not there based on the fact that IsBlank([Ref_Column])!

[James_Brennan]

I thought I understood how to do this, but I am confused. 

I made a new text type column [Student ID Entry]. The second column is the one I put the LOOKUP() on.  I must be doing it wrong because it does not return anything!

[Steve]

LOOKUP() - AppSheet Help