Issue in Ref Columns

We have 2 tables in which 1 table column is a ref of other table column.

Everything is working fine in Appsheet view, but the value of the referenced Column in a table is displayed as timestamp in Google Sheets. How can that be fixed?

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With a Ref column, your really selecting the Key column for that table.  But to 'make it look nice' what it displays is the label column you've chosen.  I presume you've set the label column to a DateTime or Time type column

Simon@1minManager.com

My key is DateTime so that is why it is putting key value in sheets. Is there any way to put the label value in google sheets?


@Kaushal_Didwani wrote:

Is there any way to put the label value in google sheets?


Yes, change the column from REF to the appropriate data type and then use an expression to retrieve the actual value you want.  But beware doing this....

The purpose of a REF column is to provide a "pointer" to a specific table row for two reasons

  1. so the app can have access to all the column values of that row. 
  2. if a specific column value should change, the table row retrieving the value will automatically be updated

For this to work, AppSheet will always record the "pointer", AKA row key, as the column value of a REF column.   You have control by the Row Label setting as to which value is displayed instead of the pointer but that is only used in the app views.

If you do not need to gain access to other column values OR do not care about getting an updated value should it be changed in the source table, then you can safely change the column from REF type to the other type and simply use an expression to get the value.  LOOKUP() can help with this.

 

We don't want to use Lookup because using ref opens up a lot of opportunities for dasboards and they are also technically correct as well. 

So I understand that wither we have to make the column which we want to display as key or we have to do lookup. 

Are we correct?

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