Group By and Sort with the column's header

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
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Hi,

I recently encountered a problem.

When I Group By a column in a view, if I leave the column Grouped in the Column Order, that column would be seen in the view (see the screenshot 01 - Group By “Nom formation”).

To get a better view like I had earlier in my AppSheet experience, I have to get out the column grouped in the Column Order (see the screenshot 02).

But since I have removed the column in the Column Order, that same column is no longer visible when I sort the view by any column of my view (see the screenshot 03 - sorted by “Date fin validité”) → I’ve lost the information “Nom formation”.

You’ll find the same view in the screenshot 04 taken in November 2024 → I didn’t lose the information “Nom formation”, this column Grouped appeared after I sorted my data by the header “Date fin validité”.

Has anyone experienced the same problem ?

Thanks for your help !

04 :

04
041512×714 225 KB

03 :

03
031452×801 104 KB

02 :

02
021432×795 78.3 KB

01 :

01
011588×801 99.1 KB

1 Like
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Attn @Adam-google

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@Tanguy_AH This is due to the change mentioned here. The hope was to make this more flexible, as many people didn’t like that the column was automatically hidden even if included in column order, but you bring up a good point with the sorting behavior. We are discussing now what we could do to address that.

A few questions for you:

  1. The column width seems excessive, is it automatically sizing that way?
  2. It looks like the column is frozen on the left which makes it seem extra redundant. Freezing of the label column is tied to the “preview new features” option, does it help to turn that off? Then you could at least reposition the column.
  3. When sorting the grouped view by a different column, did you expect that the grouping should disappear?
  4. Would sorting by date still be useful to you if the sorting was only applied within the groups, rather than removing the grouping altogether?
  5. Supposing sorting does remove the grouping, would you still expect that the column should reappear upon sorting despite being removed from the column order?
3 Likes
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  1. Yes, it’s the default size in that view

  2. I expect that yes. It was the way it worked before the change you mentioned and the users of the app like this ex way of sorting.

  3. In my case, it’d be better to remove the groups and sort the whole list.

  4. Yes. in this case, this is the feedback I had from the users.

I did not understand well the 2nd point :thinking:

Thanks for your support !

1 Like
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Thanks, I wonder if the column being so wide is due to longer values in some rows that are offscreen.

Let me try to clarify the second point. From the screenshot it looks like that column is getting automatically fixed to the left side of the table even if you scroll to the right, is that right? That behavior is related to an option called “Preview new features” under Settings / General in the editor. Initially I was thinking that this was preventing you from rearranging the columns, but I checked the behavior and it seems this only applies if the label column is also the first column in the column order. So I guess the question is, would it help to move the column later in the column order (e.g. to the end of the row instead of the front)?

1 Like