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Recursive table in a SharePoint List

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Posted on by gikido

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Hello everyone,

I have a recursive table in a SharePoint List that contains the following columns:

ParentId

Libelle

(as shown in the screenshot).

Now, I want to apply filters to retrieve, for example, only the items whose root parent has ID = 2.

How can this be done?

Thank you.

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Power Apps Pro Dev & ISV

Building Power Apps

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wolenberg_ 1,051 Moderator on at

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Hello @gikido,

You’re working with a hierarchical structure, where each item may have a parent, grandparent, etc. To find all items under ParentalID = 2, you need to trace each item's ancestry up to its top-level parent.

Unfortunately, Power Apps and SharePoint don’t support true recursion out of the box but you can work around it.

Option 1: Preprocess the hierarchy
If possible, add a column to your SharePoint list called `ParentalID`, and populate it manually or via Power Automate. This column would store the top-level parent ID for each item. Then you can easily filter like:
Filter(YourList, ParentalID = 2)

Option 2: Use nested collections in Power Apps
If you can’t modify the list, you can build a recursive lookup in Power Apps using `With()` and `LookUp()` to trace each item's lineage. For example:
With( { rootItem: LookUp(YourList, ID = 2) }, Filter( YourList, IsDescendantOf(ID, rootItem.ID) ) )

You’d need to define `IsDescendantOf()` as a custom function using nested `LookUp()` calls — but this gets complex fast and may hit delegation limits.

Option 3: Use Power Automate
Create a flow that:
1. Starts from ParentalID = 2
2. Recursively finds all children
3. Returns the full list to Power Apps as a collection

This avoids delegation issues and gives you full control over the hierarchy.

Bottom line
For performance and simplicity, adding a `ParentalID` column is the best long-term solution. If you need help building the Power Automate flow or writing the recursive logic.

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gikido 1,004 on at

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@wolenberg_

Thank you for your reply

I found the same solution in ChatGPT, but I would like another suggestion

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