{"id":16668,"date":"2021-10-19T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/power-fx-blanks-conversions-and-errors\/"},"modified":"2025-06-11T07:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T14:52:12","slug":"power-fx-blanks-conversions-and-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/power-fx-blanks-conversions-and-errors\/","title":{"rendered":"Power Fx: Experimental error handling update"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of our most popular experimental features is “Formula-level error management.”\u00a0 With good reason, it supports both working with the inevitable errors that crop up in an app and writing Blank (Null) values to databases.<\/p>\n

We are getting close to finishing this feature and enabling it for everyone to use.\u00a0 Before we do, we have a few more changes to make, and in 3.21101 we are making a small change in the Blank handling of the Value functions.\u00a0 We don’t blog on every change we make to experimental features, but these were subtle enough that we wanted to call them out.\u00a0 \u00a0We are also introducing a new place to find out about experimental features and provide feedback.<\/p>\n

Note that changes described here are only for apps where the experimental “Formula-level error management” switch is turned on.\u00a0 Most apps do not use this switch and will not be effected in any way.<\/p>\n

New home for experimental features<\/h2>\n

Before I go on, we have a new home!\u00a0 There is a new area in the Power Apps community forum for experimental features<\/a> and a subarea specifically for Error handling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We will post details and documentation on experimental features here.\u00a0 Experimental features have always been a little different<\/a> and we don’t normally add these features to the documentation until they reach preview.<\/p>\n

We will also be monitoring this forum for your feedback.\u00a0 We love feedback but it is especially important for experimental features as we make changes .<\/p>\n

Blank handling<\/h2>\n

We are making a very subtle change to Blank and empty string handling in the Value functions (Value<\/a>, DateValue<\/a>, ColorValue<\/a>, etc).\u00a0 Non Blank behavior is not changing.\u00a0 An app would need to be specifically written to the old behavior to notice a difference, which is not common.<\/p>\n

If anything we are removing some errors that you may not have known you had.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>We are changing the Value<\/a>, DateValue<\/a>, and other Value functions to no longer return errors if an empty string is passed in.\u00a0 You may have noticed these errors popping up this past spring after we started reporting more errors; this change will remove these errors.<\/p>\n

We are also changing the Value function to pass through a Blank instead of converting it to a numeric zero.\u00a0 This will help with round tripping a Blank from a database, through a text based control, and back out to the database.\u00a0 If the old behavior is desired, one can use the formula If( <value> = Blank(), 0, Value( <value> ) ).\u00a0 The Coalesce<\/a> function can also be used but would return 0 for empty strings too (which may be fine depending on your scenario).<\/p>\n

There are two Power Fx principles that we are reinforcing with these changes:<\/p>\n