Select input from previous node not working

Questions
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1

I have a very strange question/behaviour and i hope it is not the most stupid question in the world.

Every n8n Node has a drop-down “Select Input”.

But when i select a Input Node, maybe 3–4 Nodes way back, like not the direct, previous neighbor node, it will disregard this change. After I save and refresh the page, it won’t store the information about which node i selected for input and always go back to the direct neighbor node.

First i thought, maybe it has something to do with circular multi input workflows. But then i recreated the bug with very very simple workflows, like 3 nodes, sequentially.

Then i thought it had to do something with my docker-compose setup. But then i tried to recreate it in the paid n8n cloud version. Still get the error.

Now my question:

  • is this a planned behavior?
  • Why can you even drop-down select previous nodes for input anyway?

Thanks for your help!

3

Hi @Vanilla55 :wave: Welcome to the community :tada:

I can understand your confusion here - that dropdown is essentially a quick way of previewing the data in the workflow through the UI. The selection there doesn’t change anything about how n8n or your workflow works, but rather it’s there to help you out with building expressions and ensuring you can pick up the right data that you need by dragging and dropping :smiley:

An example is here:

image
image1919×763 68.9 KB

What’s shown in that preview would help you pull data through from the HTTP Request node and help you build your expression in showing you what the HTTP Request node is sending as data, but if you save the changes you’ve made to the node, it will always point to the HTTP Request node in future - no need to change anything in the dropdown :slight_smile:

Let me know if that helps!

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