Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

I have richtextbox dialog when saved displays as plaintext in gallery. May i know whats the issue here?

Gallery

Gallery TextInput

ThisItem.Description

Categories:

General Questions

Power Apps doesn't natively render HTML formatting from rich text fields in galleries. The rich text editor stores content as HTML, but when you display ThisItem.Description in a label, you get the raw text without formatting. I have shown couple of example below which i have used.

1. Use HtmlText property (limited support)

Change your label's Text property to HtmlText:

<Label>.HtmlText = ThisItem.Description

This renders basic HTML tags like <b>, <i>, <u>, <br>, but strips complex formatting like background colors, custom fonts, and nested styles. Based on your screenshot with highlights and underlines, this won't work well.

2. Strip HTML tags completely

If formatting isn't needed in the gallery, clean the text:

With(
    {rawText: ThisItem.Description},
    Substitute(
        Substitute(
            Substitute(rawText, "<br>", " "),
            Substitute(rawText, Regex(rawText, "<[^>]*>"), "")
        ),
        "&nbsp;", " "
    )
)

This removes all HTML tags and leaves plain text.

3. Create a plain text shadow field

Add a new plain text column in your data source. When users save rich text, extract and store a plain version separately:

Patch(
    YourDataSource,
    ThisRecord,
    {
        Description: RichTextEditor.HtmlText,
        Description_Plain: PlainText(RichTextEditor.HtmlText)
    }
)

Then bind the gallery label to ThisItem.Description_Plain.

4. Use a custom HTML control (workaround)

Add an HTML text control inside your gallery template instead of a label. Set its HtmlText property:

<HtmlText>.HtmlText = ThisItem.Description

This gives better HTML rendering than labels but adds complexity and performance overhead in galleries with many items.

5. Show truncated preview, full text on selection

Display simplified text in the gallery, then show the full rich text in a detail screen or expanded view when users click an item. This is the most common pattern for rich text in Power Apps.

Gallery Label: Left(PlainText(ThisItem.Description), 100) & "..."
Detail Screen RichTextControl: ThisItem.Description

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Rich text reflecting as plain text in gallery

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