SharePains

Drag and Drop in Power Apps

Drag and Drop in Power Apps

By:

Pieter Veenstra

Date:

Power Apps is great but there are some limitations. One of these limitations is drag and drop. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could drag a document into a Power App and then Power Apps uploads the document to a Document library. Well, you can do this with Power Apps.

One of my colleagues developed this drag and drop feature. In the video below you can see how a document is dropped into a Power Apps and then it is uploaded to SharePoint.

[wpvideo K1YAMIrd]

In SharePoint the document is marked as accepted and the Power Apps recognizes this and completes the upload process.

Note that it is important to run the app in play mode rather than play it in development mode as mentioned in the comments below.

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There’s a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I’m the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I’ve been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://staging.sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://staging.sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@staging.sharepains.com

Categories:

,

Tags:

23 responses to “Drag and Drop in Power Apps”

  1. Duncan Avatar
    Duncan

    Hi

    I would be really interested to know how this was achieved, as it’s exactly what I need to implement. Of particular interest is how you manage to detect the filename, as I’ve not seen that done anywhere else. Is there any way you can share that with us?

    Best regards,

    Duncan

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Duncan,

      Did you manage to do the drag and drop itself?

      1. Duncan Avatar
        Duncan

        Hi Pieter

        Using a normal image control, you can drag any file onto it. You then need to trigger a flow to upload into SharePoint, which I assume is what your colleague has done? However there’s no way that I have found so far to detect the filename in the image control, even though when you hover over it, it shows you in the tooltip! Any hints your colleague can give would be most welcome!

        Thanks,

        Duncan

      2. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        Hi Duncan,

        We used the attachment control.

      3. Duncan Avatar
        Duncan

        Sorry, I made a mistake – I used the Add Picture control, not the image one. I still can’t get the filename from that however. I also can’t add an attachment control as that only seems to be available as a control in a form for a SharePoint list.

        Anyway, Kudos to your colleague for getting it to work, I just can’t for the life of me see how it’s done!

      4. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        Hi Duncan,

        The attachment control only works when it is included on a form. Then the submit can create a temporary item in a list with the attachment. From that point a Flow can pick up the attachment and deal with it.

      5. Duncan Avatar
        Duncan

        Finally found it! It’s the FileName property of the AddMediaButton control inside the AddMediaWithImage control. Thanks for giving me the inspiration to keep looking!

        Cheers,

        Duncan

      6. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        For Images that should work but I wouldn’t expect that control to handle files though.

      7. Duncan Avatar
        Duncan

        Thanks for your reply, looks like I’ve inadvertently found a different approach! I now understand what you’ve done, which makes a lot more sense. I might try that if I can’t get my approach to work.

  2. Arnd Avatar
    Arnd

    Awesome! But how did you enable drag & drop to the attachment control?

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      You will have to add a SharePoint list form to the screen. Then only make the attachment control visible. Everything else should be hidden.

  3. ilmarco Avatar
    ilmarco

    Can one drag multiple files?

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Yes, the attachment control should be ok to receive multiple files.

  4. Francis Avatar
    Francis

    Hi ! 🙂 I tried to implement what you suggested but my attachment control doesn’t allow me to drag and drop into it. Does the feature deprecated in some way since your post ?

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Francis,

      Did you include your attachment control as part of a form? If it isn’t part of a form then it will not work, but as part of a form it does work. this does mean that you will need to create a SharePoint list with an attachment field.

      1. Arnd Avatar
        Arnd

        I have had the same issue and I finally found our that drag and drop into the attachment control doesn’t work in development mode. You have to save and publish your app. Now playback your app and drag and drop will work fine.

      2. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        Hi Arnd,

        Thank you for your comment. I will include that in the post.

  5. venseben Avatar
    venseben

    Hi Pieter. Do you know of any settings that allows you to drag and drop multiple files? In my solution it is only possible to drag and drop one file at a time :-/

  6. Bert Jan Avatar
    Bert Jan

    Hi Pieter,

    Would you mind getting me in touch with your colleague that built this? I would love to pick his brain on how this was done.

    Alvast bedankt,

    Bert Jan

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Bert Jan,

      It isn’t too complicated. you will need to use a form in Power Apps ( otherwise the attachment control doesn’t work. This form is connected to an attachment enabled SharePoint list.

      Now you can drag a file into the control. You can restyle this control as much as you like.

      Now on submission of the data a SharePoint list item is created and you could read that from SharePoint within your Power App.

  7. ScottC Avatar
    ScottC

    Hi,
    Newbie to power apps here.
    I am trying to do the same, and cannot find any examples online to learn from
    Can you give more info on this?

    thank you.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Scott, there is a dependency of the browser used. The Drag and drop will not work in all browsers.

  8. Damon Avatar
    Damon

    Drag and Drop attachments is not working in PowerApps for desktop. Drag and drop does work in same app if opened in the browser

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Recent Posts

All Categories