The actions are causing appsheet to remove the table column name ?
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That’s not a bug: it’s always worked that way and needs to on most of the apps we’ve developed else it’s going to cause issues.
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Actually the way it is now is a BUG, the dev team of appsheet must add an option to hide/show column name if inline action is enabled otherwise we work blindly
But it’s been like that for years: when do you think it became a bug?
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As far back ast Mar 2021 Googler Aleksi said this is "it’s an expected behavior - see:
Attaching inline action to a column hides column values
Are you reporting here as a feature request, rather than a bug, because it’s the intended behaviour?
You are correctly referring to column values being replaced by the inline action in table views, but @Rifad appears to be referring to the column names in the table’s header: the header line is empty in his screenshot. This is definitely a bug.
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We’re talking about column names not values so that’s a bug
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I’ve been developing apps for years and the column header has alwasy been removed when there’s an inline action: this is how the columns, and their headers, in tables have always worked.
Here’s a screenshot from January 2025 from an app we’ve developed for a client showing this behaviour, and it’s always been this way in all of our apps (we rely on it working this way - it’s defintiely not a bug)
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And another screenshot from July 2024 showing this behaviour - I think you get my point in that it’s always worked this way:
If the column is only going to show the action button, and not the value, why would you want a column as wide as the column name to only show the action?
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The final “nail in the coffin”, I found a screen recording from October 2023 showing a column with an inline action with no column name:
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When using inline actions in a table view, yes, the column name is hidden + the column values are replaced with an action icon. This is normal behavior and has been this way for years. I would say since the beginning. If you have system-generated actions related to things like address, phone number, text message, etc., the idea is to hide the title so they don’t take up much space horizontally.
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The behaviour is described as follows in AppSheet:
When you have selected “Inline” for Position:
“Attach to column [ ]
Display inline action next to this column”
(Emphasis added by me)
So I suggest it be described better in the UI.
I can confirm this has always been the behavior. It was designed this way at a time when there was no horizontal scrolling and horizontal space on mobile devices was at a premium. If we were ever to redesign this I think we would probably put the action button next to the value rather than replacing the value, which would leave the column wide enough to show the name in the header. But there is no plan to make this change now given the likelihood of disrupting apps that have designed around this behavior.
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Is there a workaround for this?
I have this feature that allows the user to search Google for the value of a certain field. However, having this field hidden on the table view is not ideal, as it is the label column.
I have set the behaviour of the inline action to only work on Detail views CONTEXT(“VIEWTYPE”)=“Detail”, but it makes no difference; the action icon is not there on the table view, but I still see a blank column.
Create a virtual column that mirrors “the value of a certain field” and attach the action to this new virtual column.
In table views, if you want to display both the value and the acton, include both columns; otherwise, include only the column that displays what you want: the original column for the value or the new column for the action.
In detail views, if you want to display both the (read-only) value and the inline action, include this new virtual column but not the original column; or include only the old column to display the value only.
In all other views, use the old column.
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Ok, thanks.
I hoped this wouldn’t be necessary.
In my opinion, whilst I don’t quite understand the logic of completely hiding the columns’ values when there’s an inline action (and not having the option to forcefully display it), I had hoped that simply not having the action show up on the table view, should be enough not to hide the column’s value…
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The reasoning goes back to the earliest days of AppSheet, before Google and before me. It’s long-entrenched (i.e., “legacy”) behavior.
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