Set a Power Apps Dropdown Default Value from a SharePoint List

Let me show you something that trips up a lot of folks when they’re building Power Apps. You’ve got a dropdown menu, and you want it to show a specific value by default—pulled straight from your SharePoint list. Sounds simple, right? Well, it can be a bit tricky if you don’t know the exact steps.

I’m going to show you how to set a Power Apps dropdown default value from a SharePoint list with a scenario. We’ll build a simple employee leave request app that automatically displays the employee’s department in the dropdown based on their SharePoint profile.

What We’re Building

Here’s the scenario: You have an employee database in SharePoint with names and departments. When someone opens the leave request form, you want the department dropdown to automatically show their department. No hunting through lists. No extra clicks.

Set a Power Apps Dropdown Default Value from a SharePoint List

So let’s get started!

Step 1: Set Up Your SharePoint Lists

First, we need to create our SharePoint lists. We’ll need two of them.

Create the Departments List

Go to your SharePoint site and create a new list called “Departments.”

Add these columns:

• Title (this comes by default) – rename it to “DepartmentName”
• DepartmentCode (Single line of text)

Add a few sample departments:

• IT (Code: IT)
• Human Resources (Code: HR)
• Finance (Code: FIN)
• Marketing (Code: MKT)

This gives your dropdown something to pull from.

Create the Employees List

Now, create another SharePoint list called “Employees.”

Add these columns:

• Title (rename to “EmployeeName”)
• Email (Single line of text)
• Department (Lookup column pointing to the Departments list)

To create the lookup column:

• Click “Add column” → “Lookup”
• Name it “Department”
• Select “Departments” as the source list
• Choose Title [DepartmentName] as the field to show

Add yourself as a test employee with your email and pick a department.

Step 2: Create Your Power App

Open Power Apps and create a new canvas app.

Click “Create” → “Blank app” → “Tablet” or “Phone” layout (your choice).

Connect to SharePoint

1. Before anything else, you need to connect your app to those SharePoint lists.
2. Click “Data” in the left sidebar. Then click “Add data” and search for SharePoint.
3. Enter your SharePoint site URL and select both lists:

• Departments
• Employees

Click Connect, and you’re good to go.

Step 3: Add a Modern Power Apps Dropdown Control

Now, let’s add the Power Apps Modern Dropdown control to your screen.

• Click Insert → Input → Dropdown. (Here, I have taken a Power Apps Modern Dropdown)
• Rename this dropdown to something meaningful. I’ll call mine ddDepartment (I like to prefix controls with their type—it keeps things organized).
• To rename it, select the dropdown and change the name in the properties panel on the right.

Step 4: Configure the Dropdown Items

Here’s where we tell the dropdown what to display.

Select your modern dropdown and look at the properties panel. Find the Items property.

Set it to:

Choices(Employees.Department)

This tells the dropdown to show all items from your Departments list.

Now set the “Value” property. This determines what field from the list gets displayed.

Select the Power Apps Dropdown -> Display -> Edit -> + Add field -> Select Value -> Add.

Your dropdown should now show all your departments when you click it.

Step 5: Set the Default Value in Power Apps Dropdown (The Important Part)

Here’s the part everyone struggles with. The DefaultSelectedItems property.

Select your Power Apps dropdown again and click on the DefaultSelectedItems property in the formula bar.

Here’s the formula we’ll use:

LookUp(Employees,Lower(Email)=Lower(User().Email)).Department

Let me break this down so it makes sense:

1. LookUp(Employees, …) – This searches through your Employees list
2. Email = User().Email – This finds the row where the email matches the current user’s email. The lower function converts all characters in a text string to lowercase
3. .Department – This gets the Department column from that employee’s row

But once you enter the code, you will see a delegation warning that the lower part of this formula might not work correctly on large datasets.

To overcome it, we can create a Power Apps Collection on the App OnStart property and then use that collection in this lookup code.

So, below represents the resolved code on the Dropdown’s DefaultSelectedItems property:

LookUp(colEmployees,Lower(Email)=Lower(User().Email)).Department

Step 6: Test Your App

Now just run the app OnStart property and click the play button (▶) at the top right to preview your app.

The dropdown should automatically show the department that matches your email in the Employees list.

Handling Blank Values

Sometimes an employee might not have a department assigned yet. Your app would break.

To achieve it, set the modern Dropdown’s DefaultSelectedItems property as:

If(
    IsBlank(
        LookUp(
            colEmployees,
            Lower(Email) = Lower(User().Email)
        ).Department
    ),
    Blank(),
    LookUp(
        colEmployees,
        Lower(Email) = Lower(User().Email)
    ).Department
)

This code specifies that, if the logged-in user has a department, preselect it. If not, leave the dropdown empty without throwing errors.

Set Power Apps Dropdown Default Value With Multiple Columns

Want to set the default based on multiple SharePoint columns? No problem.

Let’s say you also have a “Location” field and want to show only departments from the user’s location.

Change your dropdown Items property to:

Filter(
    Departments,
    Location = LookUp(
            colEmployees,
            Lower(Email) = Lower(User().Email)
        ).Location
)

The Default property stays the same, but now your dropdown only shows relevant options.

Conclusion

Setting a dropdown default value from SharePoint isn’t rocket science, but it does require understanding how Power Apps handles lookup columns.

The key takeaways:

• Use LookUp() to find specific records in your SharePoint list
• Always handle blank values to prevent errors
• Test with real data that matches your scenario

Once you get comfortable with this pattern, you’ll use it everywhere. It’s one of those techniques that makes your apps feel professional and saves users time.

Now go build something cool. And remember—if it doesn’t work the first time, check your .Value and your spelling. That fixes it 90% of the time.

Also, you may like some more Power Apps tutorials:

• Confirm() Function in Power Apps
• Get Choice Field Value in Power Apps
• Change Power Apps Dropdown to Radio button
• Power Apps Dataverse Yes/No Field
• Show File Type Icons in Power Apps Gallery