How to Let Users Create Their Own Options for Multiselect Dropdowns

The multiselect dropdown in Bubble is generally used to show and let users select from keywords, categories, tags, and more.

This in done in a “tag-like” manner, where anything that’s been “tagged” with a keyword, category, etc will show up when its keyword, category, etc is chosen.

Usually, you'll have a predefined list of options for your multiselect dropdown, but sometimes, you might want to let users add their own options to it.

For example, if you were building a “meetup” app, your users might be creating meetup events. For each event, they might fill out the name and description, and also "tag" the event with some keywords so other people can easily search for and find it.

In this case, you might already know a lot of the most popular keywords for a user’s event.

​​So, by default, your list of keyword options could already be in there — things like "music, food, fitness, etc."

To take it a step further, though, you could also let your users add their own keywords to the dropdown so they could specify even more — things like "folk music, outdoor barbecue, or HIIT workouts," for example.

Setting up your multiselect dropdown like this adds an extra layer of customization that’s entirely under your users’ own control. With that will come an experience that's even more personalized to them.

This Bubble tutorial teaches you how to set this up in your own app, step by step.

Watch now to get started.

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Plus, here are a few more ways to get help fast...

[StevenBradshaw]

Just to add to your fab video, for those wanting to save the input options to a User or Contact (on a separate data type)... To save the chosen interests list in the multidropdown input element to a separate data type, (in my case a contact data type, with a text field called 'interests') the field in the contact data type needs to be a Text field and a 'list of texts' and you can either workflow the 'Save' Step or Autobind it to the 'interests' list field. If you're NOT using autobinding, you must use a 'make changes to a data thing' workflow step and the 'Set List' option to re-new/update options in the list field using the 'Set List' option, don't use the 'Add' option, which creates duplicate 'interests' in the database, you could put this workflow on a visible 'Save' button. The video only shows how to create the dropdown and save additional typed options, rather than how to save the chosen 'interests' options to the database for a given contact or user. - Hope this helps someone! :)

[Officialchens]

I've listed everything in my database like you did and when I try to do a search for interest after that I don't see the option ´name´ I only see ´each items name´.. And how do u SAVE the selected options u already have listed in the selected user value?

[abbie]

This is great! I got it to work to add multiple new tags by setting it as the last rather than the first item. Every time I would add a new tag it would updated immediately. Also, I solved the problem of updating a specific record my setting the specific record's fields to texts. I have my tags set up in a separate data set, and have the dropdowns search from this data set, and update this data set. But then the records is saved in a different data set with a separate text data field. I'm not sure what will happen when I need to edit this, but it is working for me for now. Thank you!

[andreasilva]

Hello! Do you know how I make a text field copy the user and that at the moment a message is sent it appears that it has been sent? Please

[sanandresano]

Gabby can you do videos in 1080p. 720 is not enough

[ingmardyrman]

Hey, everything works! Just except for 1 tiny thing:( It is when i do the:

constraint-search for-'my thing'-dosent contain-this text.

Because it says ':Filtered: Value should be yes/no but right now it is a empty'
What to do?

[seva]

Gaby, Hello! Thanks for tutorial. Can you help me with a issue. I used this plugin to select and store users knowledge areas. When i select several of areas from drop down list they look really nice (each area has its background and "X" for delete). But how can i save them in user profile in that way, so when i open profile again (or refresh page) all choosen professions stored and displayed the same way as they were in the first time i selected them? I made a workflow so that selected areas should be sotred in user profile data base. But how can I display then as an initial content with the same design, not just text?

[pearloneentertainment]

mines doesn't show "is in" that you click on at about 5:45. How do I get that to show on mines?

[azmazazeri]

As usual, Marvelous!
What if the user adds not a single but multiple new tags?

[harshalachavan]

Can we allow users make multiple selections using a multi-select dropdown? Right now it's only one from the available.

[panidacharusathit]

That's what i'm looking for! Big thanks to these valuable tips and another great.

[luminrabbit]

My first thought was emails 😉 great videos looking forward to more. Thank You for creating these!

[henrikmeermeier]

i want to create an option for the user where he can select certain options which will lead to different prices. the user should have the possibility to mark his specific wishes with the help of checkboxes.

[kevynlevine]

Thanks for the video! How would I send the tags selected to another data type? I am trying to get tags selected to be attached to the meeting page on which they were selected. Thanks!

[mparkerbyrd]

Hi there! Curious about letting users "save" these interests to their profile, then giving them an "edit profile" option where their selected ones are the Default Value, but then users can still continue adding new ones. On the "edit profile" page, I have a conditional on the multiselect dropdown page, saying if the user has Interests:count>=1, then change "Default value" to "Current User's interests:unique elements". In the debugger, I can see that the correct list items are being drawn from the database, but they aren't showing up in the actual multiselect dropdown box. Do you know how to achieve that?

[dmitrykorolev]

Thanks! When Im typing multiple words as 1 tag like "folk music" it creates 2 new things when I pressed space button. How to stop it?

[jeh]

This is great Gaby. Thanks for pointing out the critical type-must-be-text issue in creating this functionality. But this presents a problem I can't figure out. In your example, you're presumably specifying the Interests for a given User. So, you'd likely want to change the User's Interests (list) field to conform to whatever's in your input, as a result of your "value has changed" workflow. But you can't simply make a change to that field using the current value of that field, because it's text, not Interests. What's the solution?

[kanishmalviya]

is it possible to do it with tags format instead of a dropdown?

[Estevanpedro]

Please do the Default value. I can not use my database list as it.

[chloecanon]

Hi Gaby! I'm new to Bubble and your tutorials have been so helpful. With the Multidropdown, is it possible for a user to choose all without having to individually choose each one?