About UNIQUEID()

[retreat_Ieyasu]

hello dear all, some of my UNIQUEID() field shows like 【3.02E+04】but【f10738b3】,and it’s randomly happened. how to fix this problem?

by the way, there are over 10000 column in my date sheet, and the database based on google sheet. thanks!

[Aleksi]

To avoid this situation with gSheet, adding a letter before the UNIQUEID() itself like “A”&UNIQUEID(). This will take care that gSheet can’t recognize it as a number like 12345E02.

[Kirk_Masden]

Perhaps it would be good if AppSheet could tweak the UNIQUEID() algorithm so that a letter was automatically placed at the beginning, regardless of whether or not the gSheet column is set to plain text.

[Kirk_Masden]

Aesthetically, I’d like to maintain the random appearance of the UNIQUEID() key in my app. Even the students who copy my app probably won’t notice or care about it, but I somehow still care about the appearance. So, here’s my solution:

concatenate(INDEX({“a”,“b”,“c”,“d”,“e”,“f”,“g”,“h”,“i”,“j”,“k”,“l”,“m”,“n”,“o”,“p”,“q”,“r”,“s”,“t”,“u”,“v”,“w”,“x”,“y”,“z”},randbetween(1,26)),uniqueid())

This randomly picks one of the 26 letters of the alphabet as the first letter. It also slightly enhances the “uniqueness” of the randomly generated uniqueid().

[Steve · Accepted solution]

Equivalent, but shorter:

(mid(“abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz”, randbetween(1, 26), 1) & uniqueid())

[retreat_Ieyasu]

thanks your help!

[Kirk_Masden]

@Aleksi, @Steve, @retreat_Ieyasu, @LeventK

This issue has been resolved:

New Bug Encountered: UNIQUEID() changed to scientific notation by Google Sheets' auto-formatting Questions

A fix for UNIQUEID has been put in place where any values it produces that look like scientific notation will be regenerated. One other case was also found and fixed where values could have leading zeros (such as 00001111) and Google Sheets or Excel would remove the leading zeros in those cases. That case has also been fixed. This fix should roll out early next week.

[LeventK]

@retreat_Ieyasu
As a side note to @Aleksi’s explanation; please check that the column in your gSheet is formatted as Plain Text as well. When set as automatic, gSheet will treat IDs such as 12345E02 as exponential numbers

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks for raising this question, @retreat_Ieyasu! I had the same problem myself (and it caused a problem in the functioning of my app). I was about to post an inquiry but your inquiry saved me the trouble.