Get Choice Field Value in Power Apps [With Real Examples]

If you’ve ever connected a SharePoint list to Power Apps and tried to read a choice column, you’ve probably run into a wall. You write ThisItem.Status expecting to see “Approved” — and instead you get something like {Value: "Approved"}. That’s confusing the first time you see it.

The reason is simple: a choice field in SharePoint is not plain text. It’s a record (basically a mini object) that holds the text inside a property called Value. Once you understand that, everything else clicks into place.

In this Power Apps tutorial, I’ll walk you through every common scenario — how to get choice field value in Power Apps label, showing choices in a dropdown, filtering a Power Apps gallery, reading the selected value, and patching it back to SharePoint. I’ll cover both single-select and multi-select choice fields, because they behave quite differently.

Why .Value Is the Key In Power Apps

When SharePoint stores a choice column, it wraps the text inside a record structure. In Power Apps, that looks like this:

{ Value: "In Progress" }

So when you want just the text, you need to go one level deeper using .Value. For example:

ThisItem.Status.Value

This is the single most important thing to know. Without .Value, your formula, either throws an error or shows the whole record object — not the clean text you want.​

Method 1: Display a Choice Value in a Power Apps Label

Let’s say you have a Power Apps gallery that is connected to a SharePoint list (IT Service Ticket). This list has a Choice field named Status (Approved, Rejected, Pending).

Now, I would like to display the value of the choice column in a Power Apps text label (inside the gallery).

Select the label from the gallery and set its Text property to:

ThisItem.Status.Value

That’s it. The label will now display readable text, such as “Approved”, “Pending”, or the stored value.​

If you skip .Value and just write ThisItem.Status, Power Apps will show {Value: "Approved"} — which is the raw record, not the display text.

Method 2: Load Choice Options into a Power Apps Dropdown

Say you want a Power Apps dropdown in your app that shows all the possible choices from a SharePoint choice column — not the values already selected, but the full list of options. That’s where the Power Apps Choices() function comes in.

Here, I will take the SharePoint list above called IT Service Ticket. This list has a Department column (Choice) that contains options such as IT, HR, FINANCE, etc.

Now, in Power Apps, select the Dropdown control and set its Items property to:

Choices([@'IT Service Ticket'].Department)

OR

Choices('IT Service Ticket'.Department)

Power Apps will pull all the defined choice options directly from SharePoint and populate your dropdown. You don’t need to hardcode anything.

This same formula works on a Combo Box control, too — just paste it into the Items property the same way.

Method 3: Read the Selected Value from a Power Apps Dropdown

Once a user selects an option from a Power Apps dropdown, you’ll want to capture that selection and use it — maybe display it, store it in a variable, or filter a gallery.

If you want to show it in a Power Apps label, set the label’s Text property to:

dd_ITDepartment.Selected.Value

dd_ITDepartment = Dropdown control name

Or if you want to save it to a variable when the user picks something, use this in the dropdowns OnChange property:

Set(varSelectedStatus, dd_ITDepartment.Selected.Value)

Then use varSelectedStatus anywhere in your app.​

Method 4: Filter a Power Apps Gallery by a Choice Field

This trips up a lot of people. If you try to filter a Power Apps gallery using a choice field the same way you’d filter a text column, it won’t work. You have to reference .Value inside the filter.

Here’s the correct syntax for filtering a Power Apps gallery based on a dropdown selection where the column is a choice field:

Filter(
    'IT Service Ticket',
    Department.Value = dd_ITDepartment.Selected.Value
)

Let’s break that down:

• Department.Value — gets the text value from the choice field in each SharePoint list item.
• dd_ITDepartment.Selected.Value — gets the department value selected by the user in the dropdown.
• Comparing both as text makes the filter work correctly.

Without .Value In the Department, Power Apps would try to match a whole record against a text string — that never works, and you’d get a blank gallery or a type-mismatch error.

Method 5: Handle a Multi-Select Choice Field in Power Apps

Multi-select choice columns behave differently from single-select. When multiple values are stored, the column returns a table of records instead of a single record. So you can’t just use .Value directly.

There is a SharePoint list named Product Details. This list has various columns. Additionally, there is a Multi-choice column called Color.

Display multiple values as a comma-separated string:

In a label inside a Power Apps gallery, set the Text property to:

Concat(ThisItem.Color, Value, ", ")

Here, Tags is the multi-select choice column name, and Concat loops through the table and joins all selected values with a comma.​

Filter a Power Apps gallery by a multi-select choice field:

To filter records where a specific choice is included in a multi-select field, use the in operator:

Filter(
    'Product Details',
    "Grey" in Color.Value
)

This checks whether “Grey” exists anywhere in the multi-select values for each record.​ But here, you will encounter the Power Apps Delegation warning when working with large datasets.

To overcome it, instead of using the SharePoint list directly, we will create a Collection either on the App’s OnStart property or the Screen’s OnVisible property. Then we will use the same collection in the gallery’s Items property:

Now you won’t see any Power Apps delegation warning, and you’ll get the exact result shown in the screenshot above.

Method 6: Power Apps Patch a Choice Field Back to SharePoint

When you want to save a user’s selection back to a SharePoint list using the Power Apps Patch() function, you need to pass the value in a specific format. Power Apps expects a record with a Value property, not just plain text.

Patching a single-select choice field:

Patch(
    'Project Tracker',
    LookUp('Project Tracker', ID = varItemID),
    {
        Status: { Value: Dropdown1.Selected.Value }
    }
)

You’re wrapping the selected text back into a record with { Value: ... } — which matches the structure SharePoint expects for a choice field.​

Patching a multi-select choice field:

For multi-select, you pass a table of records. If you’re using a Combo Box control:

Patch(
    'Project Tracker',
    LookUp('Project Tracker', ID = varItemID),
    {
        Tags: ComboBox1.SelectedItems
    }
)

SelectedItems already returns the values in the correct table format, so no extra wrapping is needed here.​

If you want to hardcode multiple values:

Patch(
    'Project Tracker',
    LookUp('Project Tracker', ID = varItemID),
    {
        Tags: [
            { Value: "Design" },
            { Value: "Development" }
        ]
    }
)

Power Apps Get Choice Field Value Quick Reference

You can quickly refer to the table below to get a whole summary of the formulas you’ll use most often:

Scenario	Formula
Show choice value in a label	ThisItem.Status.Value
Load all options into a dropdown	Choices([@'ListName'].ColumnName)
Read selected dropdown value	Dropdown1.Selected.Value
Filter gallery by choice field	Filter(List, ChoiceColumn.Value = Dropdown1.Selected.Value)
Display multi-select as text	Concat(ThisItem.Tags, Value, ", ")
Filter by multi-select value	Filter(List, "Value" in MultiChoiceColumn.Value)
Patch single-select choice	{ Status: { Value: Dropdown1.Selected.Value } }
Patch multi-select from Combo Box	{ Tags: ComboBox1.SelectedItems }

Once you internalize the idea that a choice field is a record (not plain text), working with them in Power Apps becomes genuinely straightforward. The .Value property is your best friend — whether you’re displaying, filtering, or patching.

Additionally, you may like some more Power Apps tutorials:

• Get Modern Combo Box Selected Values in Power Apps
• Set Combo Box Value On Button Click in Power Apps
• Get Collection Column Names in Power Apps
• Get Last Item ID in SharePoint List Based on Current User in Power Apps
• Power Apps Set Multiple Variables at Once