Dropdowns & Google Sheets I was setting up an...

[Keith_Winston]

Dropdowns & Google Sheets I was setting up an app which includes both dependent and nondependent/regular dropdowns. I had put multiple dropdown lists on a single sheet. I discovered that AS assumed they were dependent. Does anyone know: is there magic somewhere I can “turn off” in this case, or is it all under the hood somewhere? I was trying to be economical with sheets, but maybe that’s unnecessary? Perhaps it’s always best to have a tab/sheet for each dropdown, dependent or otherwise? Just trying to understand underlying operations/priorities a bit better. Thanks!

[Lynn]

Hi Personally I dont use dropdowns in my sheets (unless Im doing queries outside of the app), but let Appsheet do all that work

behind the scenes. appsheet.com - Customer Support - AppSheet Customer Support - AppSheet appsheet.com

[pravse]

Hi Keith, never put independent dropdown lists into the same sheet when you are using AppSheet. Each sheet maps to a table in your app, which is supposed to model a coherent set of identically structured entities.

[Keith_Winston]

Ah thanks Praveen, that’s probably a good way to look at it. Lynn, I think you misunderstood/I didn’t write unambiguously. I meant the lists from which Appsheet constructs it’s dropdowns are on a sheet. I didn’t mean the sheet had dropdowns. Anyway, thanks for the comment.

[pravse]

@Aleksi_Alkio has a good alternative approach to manage dropdown lists as well

[Aleksi_Alkio]

If you want to avoid the dependent, instead of using Table[Column] formula, you can use SELECT(Table[Column],TRUE).

If you want to read values from one cell, you can do that also. Create and virtual column with SELECT(Table[ColumnB],[ColumnA]=“DropdownName”). If the name of the virtual column is like DROPDOWN_LIST, you can call that list in Valid_If like [DROPDOWN_LIST].

[Keith_Winston]

Aleksi, I’ll have to play with it to understand what exactly you’re suggesting, but just reading it I can’t tell what advantage it offers (this is only a comment on my familiarity with the platform of course). Can you briefly explain?

[Aleksi_Alkio]

If you use SELECT(…) for your dropdowns, you can have all variables on the same tab and no need to create a lot of tabs into the spreadsheet.

The 2nd sample give you the choice to fill everything into one cell… like Option#1 , Option#2 , Option#3 , …Option#12. For the user it’s much easier to change values from one cell than opening all records one by one with the app. If you have lot of variables you need small table and it’s easy to maintain.

[Keith_Winston]

Thanks Aleksi: are there any example apps using this strategy? I think I’m still missing something. Do you know if there are performance trade-offs? I just moved all my drop-down lists (there are 6 or so and I’ll be adding more, several dependent) to a separate workbook, and deleting unnecessary columns/rows as suggested by the “minimizing sync time” article. I can’t tell if your suggestion amounts to an enum list or something… Is it written up anywhere else? If I’m asking for too much help here, don’t worry about it, I’ll figure it out later if necessary, hopefully.