topic Prepopulate a selection within a repeat in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Prepopulate a selection within a repeat

JessHedgpeth — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:08:21 GMT

Hello all,

I am trying to set the default selection of a drop down list within a repeat to be the previously selected option. I have included the table below for reference.

begin repeat	Win_Points	Mapped Points
select_one cow_code	cow_code	Cowardin code:	minimal		${previous_cow_code}
integer	ORD_code	ORD Code	numbers	yes		31000+(position(..)-1)
geopoint	survey_points	Points
text	OHWM_note	Note:
end repeat

So, if they select "OHWM" as their cow_code during the first repeat, is there a way to make cow_code automatically default to "OHWM" until they change it? And then, if they do change it to "PEM", can it automatically default to the new selection now instead of "OHWM"?

I've tried my hand at a couple of different options, but so far I don't think I'm using the correct code, or not putting it in the correct place.

Thank you!

Re: Prepopulate a selection within a repeat

Neal_t_k — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:45:24 GMT

There currently is not a good way to do it. You can populate the hint with a previous answer or I think @DougBrowning has a JavaScript for it. It is something that is wanted for a while. But any calculation of from the same question in a previous repeat ends in a cyclic redundancy. Hopefully in the next iteration.

See: Solved: Duplicate previous repeat values? - Esri Community

Prepopulate answers in a repeat with last values - Page 3 - Esri Community

Re: Prepopulate a selection within a repeat

JessHedgpeth — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:31:36 GMT

Dang. That's what I was running into - with it being a cyclic redundancy on the survey side. I appreciate you popping the references to the community forum posts here - I searched it (I figured folks had this issue before) but couldn't hit on the right search terms.

Thank you for your help!