List Type columns can only be Virtual

[1minManager]

Can someone from Appsheet please explain why list type columns have to be virtual? Yet an ENUM LIST type is fine.

[1minManager]

The rational behind this question has cropped up a few times.

So I’ve got a table of educational courses. Each course has a name, typically a sentance or so long, and a Code which is Alphanumeric 3 Characters. The user wants to choose the courses via an ENUMLIST by name. Whereas I also need to record the code as well, as a list.

I can’t use a Ref with the course name as needs to be a multiple choice. And the table that stores the list of chosen courses is already at 2000 records and they are barely using the App. So I don’t want to use a virtual column unless I have to.

This works fine to create a lst of Codes, with the column as a TEXT
TEXT(SELECT(CourseData[Code],IN([Name],[_ThisRow].[QLLongText])))

But now all the IN() funtions I have have failed. So I’m left with either changing IN() to CONTAINS() and being very strict on the course codes I use. Or go to a virtual column. Which is very inefficent as this Codes column will never change

[Steve]

1minManager:

The user wants to choose the courses via an ENUMLIST by name. Whereas I also need to record the code as well, as a list.

So each row has an EnumList column to contain the user-selected course names, and a column of some other type to contain the generated list of course codes corresponding to the chosen course names?

1minManager:

I can’t use a Ref with the course name as needs to be a multiple choice.

Can’t an EnumList have a base type of Ref?

1minManager:

This works fine to create a lst of Codes, with the column as a TEXT
TEXT(SELECT(CourseData[Code],IN([Name],[_ThisRow].[QLLongText])))

But now all the IN() funtions I have have failed.

Why not just make this column EnumList, too? Make the expression the column’s Initial value and set Reset on edit to ON.

[1minManager]

Steve:

Why not just make this column EnumList , too? Make the expression the column’s Initial value and set Reset on edit to ON .

This worked out fine

Thanks @Steve