How to Search User in Power Apps [By Name, Department, JobTitle]

While working on a Power Apps application, there was a screen where the admin wanted to search and filter the gallery based on Microsoft 365/Office 365 users.

Let’s say there is a Dropdown control containing departments such as IT, HR, and FINANCE, and a Text input control. Admin will navigate to the screen and select any department, then search for any user/employee name in the text box. The gallery should filter by department and user name.

Refer to the screenshot below:

In this article, I will explain how to search user in Power Apps with the following examples:

• Search user by display name in Power Apps (Single and multiple)
• Search Office 365 users in Power Apps Combo box control
• Search SharePoint People in Power Apps
• Search a user by email in Power Apps
• Search and filter user by job title in Power Apps

Search User in Power Apps

Here, we will see how to search for a user in the Power Apps Combo box control with two different approaches:

1. Search for a single user in the Power Apps Combo box
2. Search multiple users with the same name in the Power Apps Combo box

Let’s look at the examples below:

1. If you want to find a single user by their email address, it’s very easy. You need to use the formula below to get the user details.

• Insert a Power Apps Combo box control and set its Items property to the code below:

Office365Users.UserProfile("38d0ceb0-9414-4788-8dd6-51c61f5cb02c")

38d0ceb0-9414-4788-8dd6-51c61f5cb02c = Provide the UPN or email of the specific user

NOTE:

Before applying the code above, you must connect Office365Users connector to the app.

• Preview the app and expand the Combo box; you can see the particular user name under it, as shown below.

2. If you need to search for multiple users by first name, last name, or any field other than email or user ID, use the code below on the Combo box’s Items property:

Office365Users.SearchUser({searchTerm: "User"})

User = Provide the employee’s first name or last name

Preview the app and open the Combo Box. You’ll see all the users whose first name starts with “User,” as shown below.

Search Office 365 Users in Power Apps

Next, we will see how to search Microsoft 365 users (also known as Office 365 Users) in the search box and filter the Power Apps gallery accordingly.

In the screenshot below, the Department dropdown lists departments such as IT, HR, FINANCE, SALES, etc. If the user doesn’t search for anything, then the gallery will show all the Office 365 users by default.

If the user searches only for the Department, then the gallery will filter accordingly. Meanwhile, if the user searches both the department and the name, the gallery will filter based on that, and the results will be displayed as shown below.

To achieve it, follow the formula below:

Select the gallery and set its Items property to:

Filter(
    Office365Users.SearchUser({searchTerm: txt_EnterName.Value}),
    Department = dd_Department.Selected.Value
)

Where,

• txt_EnterName = Text input name where the user can search the employee name
• dd_Department = Dropdown control name

Save, publish, and preview the app. Search for the name and department, and you can see the gallery will filter accordingly.

NOTE:

By default, the code above only returns 100 results. So if your organization has more than 100 people with the same name, for example, many employees named “Rose”, the function may not return all of them, even if only a few belong to the HR department.

To handle this, you can increase the number of users returned by SearchUser by using the expression below in the gallery’s Items property:

Filter(
    Office365Users.SearchUser(
        {
            searchTerm: txt_EnterName.Value,
            top: 500
        }
    ),
    Department = dd_Department.Selected.Value
)

Moreover, in Power Apps, in case if you want to display only active users from Office 365, then follow this article: Display Only Office 365 Active Users

Search SharePoint Person Name in Power Apps

Next, we will discuss how to search a SharePoint person name in Power Apps using a Text box and a gallery.

The screenshot below represents a Text/search box and a gallery control. This gallery contains all the records from a SharePoint list.

If the text box is empty, the gallery will show all the SharePoint records. But if you type a specific person’s display name, the gallery will filter the list and show only that person’s details.

This is the SharePoint list (Employee Survey Form) below contains with these fields:

Column	Data type
Employee Full Name	Person
Employee Email	Single line of text
Contact Number	Number
Current Location	Choice
Age	Number
Photo	Image

To achieve the above scenario, select the gallery and set its Items property as:

Search(
    AddColumns(
        'Employee Survey Form',
        'displayname',
        'Employee Full Name'.DisplayName
    ),
    txt_EmpName.Value,
    'displayname',
    Title
)

Where,

• “displayname” = Specify the new column name
• txt_EmpName = Text input control name (Make this text input’s Trigger output property to KeyPress)

Save, publish, and preview the app. Whenever you will try to enter any employee name, the gallery will start filtering according to it.

Search User Email in Power Apps

Also, you can search user email based on their name in Power Apps.

For example, imagine there are two text input boxes. When the search box is empty, the app will automatically show the first user’s email address from Office 365 in the second text box.

But if the user types a name in the search box, the second text box will update and display the email address of the person they searched for.

To workaround this, select the Email Address text box and set its Value property as:

First(Office365Users.SearchUser({searchTerm: txt_Name.Value})).Mail

Where,

txt_Name = 1st text input control name

Likewise, if you want to show multiple email addresses separated by commas, you can use the Concat function in the Text input’s Value property like this:

Concat(Office365Users.SearchUser({searchTerm:txt_Name.Value}),Mail&", ")

Also, change the text input control’s Mode property to Multiline as like below.

As a result, you will see all the Office 365 user emails. Also, when you will search a user name in the 1st search box, all the emails of that specific user will display in the second text box.

Search User By Job Title in Power Apps

Let’s say you want to search users by their job title and filter the gallery based on that. For example, when I typed “Marketing Assistant,” the gallery showed only the users whose job title matched that search.

To do this, select the gallery and set its Items property as:

If(
    IsBlank(txt_EnterJobTitle.Value),
    Office365Users.SearchUser(),
    Filter(
        Office365Users.SearchUser(),
        txt_EnterJobTitle.Value = JobTitle
    )
)

Where,

txt_EnterJobTitle = Text box name

Preview the app. When the search box is empty, the gallery will show all users. But if you type a job title, the gallery will filter and show only the users who match that job title.

NOTE:

In the same way, we can search the Office 365 users by using their Display name, Department, Phone number, etc. in Power Apps.

Search User JobTitle Without Using Power Apps Text Box

Here, we’ll look at how to search the user and filter the gallery without using a search box. Once you apply the formula, the gallery will automatically filter and show the correct results.

To do this, select the gallery and update its Items property with the following code:

Filter(
    Office365Users.SearchUser(),
    JobTitle = "Retail Manager"
)

Where,

“Retail Manager” = Specify the user job title that you want to filter

I hope this article helped you understand how to search for users in Power Apps using different methods, such as by display name, department, job title, and more with a few examples.

Also, you may like some more Power Apps tutorials:

• Search in a Power Apps Gallery
• Save Power Apps Form Attachments to SharePoint List
• Prompt in Power Apps
• Dataverse Image Column