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Random date input not creating dates in December

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Posted on by chris9486

I've written an expression that will write random dates but it is completely skipping December. Can someone tell me what I've done wrong please?

parseDateTime(concat(concat(concat(concat(rand(9,12),'-'),rand(1,31)),'-'),rand(2024,2024)),'MM-dd-yyyy')

If someone could also help me wrote an expression that will write dates into Jan and Feb 2025 that would be great. When I change 2024,2024 to 2024, 2025 and 9,12 to 9,3 it just doesn't work for me.

Thank you

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Chriddle 8,441 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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13 ;)

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Expiscornovus 33,195 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @chris9486,

You can use the Select approach which Paul Murana shared earlier in one of his blogs:

https://tachytelic.net/2022/04/power-automate-flow-add-working-days-date/

I have tweaked it a bit so it uses a StartDate and EndDate instead.

Below is an example

From

range(0,int(first(split(dateDifference(outputs('StartDate'),outputs('EndDate')), '.'))))

Map (switched to text mode)

formatDateTime(addDays(outputs('StartDate'),item()), 'yyyy-MM-dd')

Compose to pick a random data of that array

body('Select')[rand(0,sub(length(body('Select')),1))]

Test result

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Chriddle 8,441 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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This returns a random date between today (inclusive) and 2025-03-01 (exclusive).

This only works if the end date is greater than the start date.

addDays( utcNow(), rand( 0, int( first( split( dateDifference( startOfDay(utcNow()), '2025-03-01' ), '.' ) ) ) ), 'yyyy-MM-dd' )

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chris9486 27 on at

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That's brilliant thank you all. Now how do I set all 3 to the answer!!

You've saved me so so so much time.

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Expiscornovus 33,195 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Nice job @Chriddle, single expression is even better

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chris9486 27 on at

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I have several questions after testing these methods this morning.

Context; at work I am making an access register for shared files. SharePoint list has 1015 items on but we don't know when we shared them with the individuals. We want to check every XX days whether they need access. So we're wanting to generate random dates within a 6 month period to fill in the access granted date column- spaced out so we don't get overloaded each day with ones we need to check.

@Chriddle - I can't get your method to work with dates in the past. What changes would I need to make to the expression to choose between a date in the past and future (say 01/10/2024 - 01/04/2024). It's 10:14am now and I have been at this since 6.30am.

@Expiscornovus - your method is working almost perfectly. I put the start date as 2024/10/01 and end date as 2025/04/01. It is writing dates in September. It's driving me up the wall because no where am I stating to start in September. So I don't know why it is doing it.

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Chriddle 8,441 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Just replace utcNow() with the date. If your date doesn't have a time, the function startOfDay() is not needed.

E.g.

addDays( '2023-01-01', rand( 0, int( first( split( dateDifference( '2023-01-01', '2025-01-01' ), '.' ) ) ) ), 'yyyy-MM-dd' )

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chris9486 27 on at

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@Chriddle thank you for the quick reply. That works. I thought it was doing September again, but I figured it out. I am going to blame it on my lack of sleep. When I was clearing the date column using PA and then using the expressions/composes to fill in the date, I didn't have 5000 written in my get items top count so it was only doing the default 100. So when I was asking it to clear the column it was only doing the first 100.

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