Question

Populate choice column by a list lookup control

  • 23 April 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 43 views
N
Badge +1

Hello all, I am currently running Sharepoint 2016 with Nintex Forms 2016 (4.6.2.0)

 

In one of my sharepoint lists I have a lot of lookup and managed metadata columns. For reasons irrelevant to the question here, I need to change as many of the former to single text or choice columns as possible.

 

For single text columns I can achieve this, by using a list lookup control in forms which get data from different source lists and assign selected choice as text to the single text column. This works as intended for single choice lookup columns, since I in Sharepoint View I can still filter the column by those choices.

 

However, if I have multi-select lookup column, the result is a comma-separated value. Let’s say, from a list with choices “A”, “B” and “C” - I would select “A” and “C”. The single text column then contains a text value: “A; C”. Filtering this column in a sharepoint view gives me then not the choices “A” and “C” as it would be in a proper lookup column, but a choice “A; C” which of course is not usable.

 

A solution for this problem would be to use a (not prepopulated) choice column instead of a single text column. However, a list lookup control in Nintex form does not allow me to save text to a choice column. Or at least I didn’t find how to do it.

 

Is there any way to achieve this?

 

Thank you in advance!

2 replies

B
Userlevel 1
Badge +8

The problem with multi-select values!  Anytime this happens either the column is not filterable in a list view.

The only reasonable work around I found is to have additional columns in the view that are based upon calculated columns in the list.  So if you have a column named Multi Select with 3 choices (A,B,C) you would add 3 calculated columns called “A”, “B”, and “C”.

For calculated column “A”, the formula would be =IF(ISERROR(FIND("A",[Multi Select])),"No","Yes") or =IF(ISERROR(FIND("A",[Multi Select])),"","A")

Repeat for the other calculated columns and add them to the view.

Is ugly, but does not require workflows, etc.

N
Badge +1

@bgarvey thank you for your suggestion, however it's not exactly what I am looking for.

I specifically need it to work as described in a choice column. Currently I do use a normal multi-select sharepoint lookup column, which works just fine.

But I will be forced to switch to power apps instead of nintex in a foreseeable future. And power apps has a very low limit of lookup columns in a list which are allowed. Thus I need to get rid of them. On the other hand in power apps it is easy to populate a choice column via internal lookup functionality. Thus I need to find a way to switch to choice columns for all multi-select columns I use.

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