How to Check If a SharePoint List Item Exists Before Create/Update

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Posted on by Jonihoni

Hey everyone,
I’m running into an issue with a Power Automate flow and I’m hoping someone with more experience can help :)

I have a SharePoint document library folder that contains documents.

I also have a SharePoint list where I want to maintain an overview of all documents in that folder (one list item per document).

I want my flow to keep the SharePoint list in sync with the folder:

If a document is new in the folder, create a new list item.

If a document is modified in the folder, update the existing list item.

I use the trigger “When a file is created or modified” (because I want to cover both new uploads and edits).

When the flow runs, I try to check whether this document already exists in the SharePoint list.

To do that, I compare a unique identifier:

I want to use the document’s unique ID (the “UniqueKey” from the built-in column that comes with SharePoint lists), and compare it to a ID from 'Get Item'.

Then:

If the ID already exists in the list (meaning it’s a “modified” scenario), the flow should update that list item.
If the ID does not exist in the list (meaning it’s a “new file” scenario), the flow should create a new list item

In my head, this structure makes sense but in it doesn’t work as expected.
The flow either fails during the lookup step, or it doesn’t correctly detect whether the item already exists, so the update/create logic doesn’t behave properly.

What am I doing wrong, and how can I improve this flow design to reliably:

check whether the document already exists in the list (based on the unique ID), and then

update the list item if it exists, otherwise create a new one?

It would be amazing if someone could help me troubleshoot the approach

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Building flows

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Vish WR 3,748 on at

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@Jonihoni

UniqueKey is not the best value to compare in Power Automate because it can be inconsistent depending on the action/output. Instead, use a stable value like:

File Identifier

File Path

or SharePoint Item ID

You can try

Trigger → When a file is created or modified

Use Get items on your tracking list with a Filter Query matching the file identifier/path

Check:

If item exists → Update list item

If no item found → Create list item

Store the document’s Identifier or Server Relative URL in the SharePoint list as a unique column, then use that for lookup every time.

Vishnu WR

LinkedIn - My Tech Space

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David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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I think there’s a small misunderstanding here. A document library is a SharePoint list, but it’s a different list than your custom SharePoint list. Each list generates its own IDs independently, so a file’s ID in a document library won’t correlate to the ID of a list item.

Vish WR's recommendation to store the Identifier or Server Relative URL in the SharePoint is good. You can then use the Get items action with a query filter on this value to see if an item exists in the list with this value already. You'll use a length() expression to check how many items are returned, and if it returns 0, that means an item does not yet exist with the same Identifier.

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