Table Schema ERROR OR View/Slice issue

[leonsteber]

Hello!

Free version of appsheet. Not being shared.

Under "VIEWS" I get the error: 

The data for this view cannot be found. Please select a new data table in the view settings.

However there's no sign of which particular view it is referring to, neither is there a red error circle against any of my views.

I caused this error a few days ago when I either deleted a SLICE that was being used by a VIEW or vice versa. I solved the issue by going back to an older version.

It happened again today, same error, but this time I saw that one of my TABLES was missing, only a message telling me to delete and add the table again.  I did so, adding back all the expressions (time consuming), etc, but the error persists under my VIEWs.

I'm not sure what to try next. Have gone back many many versions and they're all with the unrunnable message, no hint at which table or view is the problem, no mention of mismatch in columns.

Can anyone help me please?  Do I have to abandon and start again (sigh)?

[leonsteber · Accepted solution]

Ok, after working with Support and getting no resolution, I ended up noticing some VIEWS were using slices with a suffix of "1". Then saw that two tables had disappeared from the app (and from the GS). These were rebuilt and added to the app, eventually all came good. 

Lesson learned is to work carefully with adding new tables and changing views to look at those new tables/slices, also won't be deleting any slices/views, rather just prefixing them with "DELETE_" and maybe taking care of them at the end when I need to clean things up.

[leonsteber · Accepted solution]

Ok, after working with Support and getting no resolution, I ended up noticing some VIEWS were using slices with a suffix of "1". Then saw that two tables had disappeared from the app (and from the GS). These were rebuilt and added to the app, eventually all came good. 

Lesson learned is to work carefully with adding new tables and changing views to look at those new tables/slices, also won't be deleting any slices/views, rather just prefixing them with "DELETE_" and maybe taking care of them at the end when I need to clean things up.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Today, I also faced this error.

Fortunately since I had read @leonsteber post yesterday, I could at least know sequence that leads to the error.

I added a Google calendar as table in an app and a summary table view based on that calendar.

Later I deleted the summary view that I created based on the Google calendar and also deleted the Google calendar as a table. Thereafter the following error started appearing.

Now unless,  I add the Google calendar as table again, I am not able to get rid of the error.

So essentially the error seems to be one cannot delete a table once added to an app. If one tries to delete a table, that app starts throwing the error, even if you delete the related view that you have manually created before deleting the table.

However when I tried to add another table, a summary view in another app and later I deleted the view and table, it did not throw the above error.

So error seems to be appearing in some specific combination that at this moment I could not pinpoint.

[leonsteber]

@Suvrutt_Gurjar  

I think you could be right in that it's caused by deleting a table (or even a slice) but if there's still a VIEW that references that TABLE/SLICE it throws the error. And it can't even identify which VIEW in the error message.  I had support working on this for a few hours yesterday, I hate saying it, but they seemed a bit useless.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Thank you for all the useful hints @leonsteber .

Yes, there seems to be a specific combination of view and table names that it starts throwing error. I had similar sounding tables and names ( even though not identical names) .

I think once system generated views are created for those tables , the system generated views remain undeleted in the background and if the corresponding slice or table is deleted , the error pops up.  No matter what I do that error cannot be undone unless I add the table again that I do not want anymore.

Just for a reference I had AppSheet calendar view and Google calendar view with similar sounding names. Now the system does not seem to remove those system generated views, even if I remove the Google calendar as a table.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar · Accepted solution]

Update: finally I also solved it by going into each view and looking for any views that were assigned to the deleted table and found two such views.

However the error message surely needs to be more specific or the app editor should be more intuitive to delete all the views associated with a table or slice once the table or slice is deleted.

Will request @lizlynch to update the development team on this bug.