Unable to select 'done' when clearing (-) all choice fields in edit screen

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1

Hi guys.

To start with, thanks to everyone that’s helped create such a great app building platform.

I can’t share the original app due to personal data, but here is a demo app.
Video:

App:
https://ixpvn.glideapp.io
Sheet:

My problem:
I’m trying to use the top ‘-’ (hyphen) option in a choice component in the edit view, to clear the cell and save the result as empty. I have multiple (4) choices the user can make in this particular edit screen.

I can select ‘done’ to save if all but 1 are cleared, but not if all of them are as I often require. ‘Done’ is greyed out when they are all cleared, even though the ‘required’ option is not selected.

I tried using ‘delete item’, but this clears the WHOLE row in the sheet, not just the 4 cells i need, breaking functionality. Plus, even if that worked, it would be confusing wording to the user.
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Is there a solution anyone can share?

I would be grateful for any help anyone can give.

P.s. What does the hyphen option in a choice actually save to the sheet? An ISBLANK function doesn’t return true, but it looks empty. Would be useful to know for future formula creation (mmmm, formulas :yum: )

1 Like
2

I have the same problem with one of my apps. It’s very similar to yours. It’s a calendar view where I can select bowlers for that weeks bowling roster. Once a bowler is added, I can’t remove all of them without manually removing it in the sheet. Now that we have the Required option for fields, it would think this could be relaxed a bit. Possibly makes sense when adding a record, but if you are editing a record and only certain fields are editable, it doesn’t make sense to require at least one value to be filled.

3

Add/edit/form screens have the “feature” that they don’t let you submit an empty form, but I can see that for edit screens this doesn’t actually make all that much sense, as evidenced by your use case.

Arguably there are even scenarios where in add and form screens you might want to allow an empty submission, when the required information is all in column assignments, and there might be maybe just one optional “Comments” text entry.

Thank you for reporting! We’ll think this over.

1 Like
4

Regarding ISBLANK: Glide writes an empty string to those empty choice columns. You can check for it with LEN(X)=0. That’s usually preferable to ISBLANK.

5

Thank you @Mark. Good to know about LEN(X)=0.
I will use that.
And thanks for looking into a fix for my issue. Looks like others are facing it too which is reassuring it’s not just me being stupid (Ta @Jeff_Hager)

I’ve been using glide for a while, and have normally just passively waited for things to be fixed or built a sheets workaround. But this has made me think I should probably be more proactive if it might help others and improve the product possibly.

Thanks again.

1 Like
6

Yes, especially if you come across bugs: please report them. We take bugs very seriously, and if they’re severe, or blocking a considerable number of people, we will fix them very quickly.