Canvas Apps Expressions

Another invisible error?

The Power Apps community brought back memories of an issue that took me a lot of time to figure out. The same question was posted by two users - they were seeing an error in the App Checker but couldn't identify or locate the control that was being referenced by the error.

App Checker is really helpful in identifying and locating issues. But what if there is an issue that the App Checker flags but doesn't help you to locate it? I will provide an answer with the help of an example.

Here is the setup:

  1. I have a gallery which is originally called: BrowseGallery16.
  2. I then rename the gallery to : UsersGallery1.
  3. I have the OnSelect property of the gallery set to: Set(testVar, true (which obviously has an error).
  4. The corresponding error (references the gallery as galleryTemplate32) is misleading and does not provide complete information.
  5. This error is really difficult to find because it doesn't have a corresponding red asterisk
  6. Once I change the OnSelect property of the gallery to: Set(testVar, true) the error goes away

You can watch this in play here:

Locating this error is tricky because of the following reasons:

This one is tricky for 2 reasons:

  1. The error message references a completely different name for the gallery which you obviously cannot find by searching
  2. The error message corresponds to the OnSelect proprety of the gallery for which there is no corresponding control (gallery errors that show up at the gallery level are typically for the Items property, not for properties like OnSelect.

This has been identified as a bug. But until it gets resolved, if there is an error in the App Checker that doesn't reference an identifiable control, it is a good idea to check the OnSelect property of all galleries in the app.

Hopefully this will help save time in locating a bug that seems to be invisible!

Have fun! Get addicted!

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