Ref Column values not populating to google sheets

[debb189]

Hi All,

I am stuck with an issue in saving the data from one of my forms. I have a entity set where there are the following entities.

Customer (with PK : Id), Category (with PK : cat_id) and  Project(with PK : project_id, and Ref keys for Customer (id) and Category (cat_id). The REF_ROW() are set.

When I add a project from the inline project list in the category detail view, the category (cat_id) and Customer (id) are not getting populated.

Also another observation, I don't see the Ref columns in the list of columns, to be added under 'Column Order' in the Project detail view.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[Denny774]

Hey,

make sure you're table setup looks at least like this:

Category
Name			Type	Formula					Initial Value
_RowNumber		Number
cat_id			Text						    UNIQUEID()
cat_name		Name
Related Projects List	REF_ROWS("Project", "category_id")


Customer
Name			Type	Formula					Initial Value
_RowNumber		Number
ID			    Text					        UNIQUEID()
Name			Name
Related Projects List	REF_ROWS("Project", "customer_id")


Project
Name			Type	Formula					Initial Value
_RowNumber		Number
project_id		Text						    UNIQUEID()
project_name	Name
customer_id		Ref (Customer)
category_id		Ref (Category)

[debb189]

That's correct. I just solved the problem. One of the Ref columns was not populating and the Log Monitor shows Action as "Success". Steps I used to debug:

1. Removed Ref in Projects for the category column and changed it to 'Text' type with a default Initial Value. It got saved.

2. Then I realized the issue is with Ref or Sheets not being able to update the data in that column. I did a '=Type()' of the empty cell in my sheets under the column and it returned a Number ie., 1. Probably no value is considered as Number in sheets.

3. I then changed back the Datatype to Ref in Appsheet for Category in the Projects table and added a default Initial value of "NA", to ensure it as text. It has worked as a charm. 

Big relief! There is no mention of this kind of a challenge, whatever pattern of questions you put up on Google.

Thanks for looking into the issue.

[PT_2]

Sheesh am I glad I stumbled across your answer. It must be that we are the only two people on the planet to have this problem. I would certainly love to know *why* this is happening.

Same issue: ref column not populating when adding a new detail item. Went crazy trying to figure out if it was appsheet, something in the underlying gsheet, solar flares, etc.

Putting in a dummy initial value seems to have fixed it. Completely strange.  Why this problem doesn't show up in every ref column is a mystery.