Drop-down fields, whose values are calculated using a formula, sometimes hold thousands of values. This can make it hard for your users to find what they’re looking for.
If you app is used on a desktop computer, your in-the-know users can type the start of the value they are looking for using their keyboard to move to that value quickly. However, few users are aware that this feature is available, and users on mobile devices are out of luck.
You can add a text field that filters a drop-down field, meaning that the drop-down field only displays those values that match the text field value.
Here’s an example app:
The drop-down field contains 100 names, but only those names that contain the text string given in the text field are displayed.
This is achieved using the FILTER formula function. Here’s the formula of the Values property of the text drop-down field:
Names is a named value holding 100 names:
To enable case-insensitive searching, use this FILTER formula instead:
The formula above makes the search string lower-case, before searching through the names, which are also made lower-case. LOWER is used to convert the case.
Note: Named values are not available in our Starter plans. You can work around this limitation by copying and pasting the formulas of named values to take the place of their names in other formulas referencing them.