Can't get the correct field in the browser gallery, the column name won't appear

Question

I have a sharepoint list with 3 columns: Title, Category, Quantity. It's a simple inventory list of about 10 items that fields managers can look up availability before making a request for equipment.

The category column is giving me a problem. It's a choice column and each item must have at least one option picked, but some have more. I put this here because we might expand this inventory list depending on how it goes and I want to have another sorting option.

I want to have Category show up in the list of fields I can choose from for the browser gallery the same way I can choose Title & Quantity, but it doesn't appear. I'd like for it to be there so there is an option to search by category. I can't figure out what to do.

I have some coding experience and can get comfortable changing that in powerapps, but I have no real experience in powerapps other than a few videos and articles. As of now all I've done is connect my sharepoint list as the data source after I clicked on + Create in the left menu and just let it make the default I guess.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The list of the fields that can be selected via the Fields "wizard" on the right-hand pane are those that have simple "translations" to a text column, such as text or numeric columns in your SharePoint list, or even choice columns with a single selection. Since Category is a multi-select choice column, then the conversion is not as trivial, so the wizard doesn't offer that option.

You can update it yourself, however. For example, you can select one of the existing labels in the gallery (or add a new one), and update its Text property with a function such as Concat that can combine multiple elements into a single one, like in the example below:

Concat(ThisItem.Category, Value, ", ")

Here's an example; I have a SP list with a few fields:

If I add a gallery and try to use the "Fields" dialog to choose a multi-selection choices field, it won't show up (as I mentioned above):

So to use that we need to edit the expression for the label in the formula bar directly. In this example I'm replacing the 'ChoiceSingle' field, but you could also add another label to hold the multi-selection field: