RE: Import excel to SharePoint list - create item - Issue with Mutiple Email id's while uploading excel into sharepoint list

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by KeerthiRaj96

Hi folks,

I have an issue in my flow where certain fields have people pickers. It throws an error as highlighted below:

status": 400 messages: The specified user could not be found

My flow works fine for one email id when mentioned in excel. But the above issue occurs when I give more than one mail id in the same excel cell. sample example with 2 mail IDs:

Team Lead	Manager Name
abc.cd@domain.com; EFC.cd@domain com	abc.cd@domain.com; EFC.cd@domain com

Kindly help out.

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (10)

Answers (3)

Ellis Karim 11,683 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report

You can set multiple people for the Person field using an array variable. The array variable will have the following format:
In the following example I updated the Team Lead field which is of type "Person or Group":

When you hover the mouse over a name, the person's contact card is displayed.

Here is a demo flow that should help with your issue. I start with a list of email addresses, then I split the email string at the semi-colon character ';' to get each email address. I will later append each email address to the varTeamLead variable:
Here is the main body of the flow. Before adding a person to the Person field, I check if that person exists in AAD:
Here is a close-up of the flow:
We check if that person exists in AAD and only then update the varTeamLead array:
Close-up of the append to array variable action:
{
"Claims": "i:0#.f|membership|email-address"
}
Next, create the SharePoint item record and populate the Team Lead field by switching to "input entire array" mode as shown below, then select the varTeamLead variable as the input:
This is the content of the varTeamLead variable:

Hope this helps.
Let me know how you get on.

Ellis

____________________________________
If I have answered your question, please mark the post as Solved.
If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
KeerthiRaj96 66 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @ekarim2020 ,

Thanks for your response. I tried out the same steps as you mentioned and getting the below error while saving the flow:

Please clarify whether the above method will work for excel upload into SharePoint list (since your example shows for SharePoint list form).

Current flow steps which I have created for your reference:

In Compose action-> inputs-> I have mentioned the excel team reporting senior team lead name instead of Email id's (as per your example)

Team Lead column:

kindly help out to resolve it!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Ellis Karim 11,683 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Here is the structure of the working demo flow I created. I have labelled the content and expressions. You should be able to zoom-in an see the details. I'm storing and reading the email addresses from a compose action. I am also checking to see of the user exists in Azure AD before appending them to the array variable:

I'll change the flow later to use an Excel as it's data source. In your case you want to read one Excel row at a time, process that row row (i.e Create Item), then continue on to the next row in an Apply to Each loop.
Hope this helps.
Ellis

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
KeerthiRaj96 66 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @ekarim2020,

From your flow, I can able to get the expressions, contents but I need to do this with an excel file upload SharePoint. I replicated the same flow only by replacing the email ids with the excel column name.

My excel file will look like this for your reference:

It will be helpful if you could show the flow to use an excel file as a data source and upload the details of respective columns it into the Sharepoint list.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Ellis Karim 11,683 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report
Let's start with the following Excel table:
which we'll use to create items in the following SharePoint list:
Team Lead and Manager names are Person fields that allow multiple people to be selected.
This is the entire demo flow which I'll expand in more detail below:
(1) Start by reading the Excel rows in the table:
(2) Apply to Each loop:
(3) Next we add a Select action, the data source is the Team Lead email addresses - which we split. And for each email address we construct the Claims property:
You should be able directly copy-and-paste the code below into the Map field:

split(items('Apply_to_each')?['Team Lead'],';') i:0#.f|membership|@{item()}

(4) Next we add a Select action, the data source is the Manger email addresses - which we split. And for each email address we construct the Claims property:
You should be able directly copy-and-paste the code below into the Map field:

split(items('Apply_to_each')?['Manager Name'],';') i:0#.f|membership|@{item()}

(5) Finally we create the SharePoint item, specifying the Team Lead and Manager claims:

Ellis
____________________________________
If I have answered your question, please mark the post as Solved.
If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
KeerthiRaj96 66 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @ekarim2020 ,

I have implemented the same steps as you have shown for excel upload to SharePoint list by copy pasting the expression only replaced column names.

Once the flow triggered, I ended up getting below error:

Flow Image1:

Flow Image 2 (set operation expression highlighted in notes):

I have checked my excel files as well , where it is set to text datatype for those columns S,T (reporting manager, Market Head) which i am referring in the set operation logic:

Kindly help me out to resolve this error. (As mentioned in private chat i have shared the expanded image for reference)

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Ellis Karim 11,683 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report

The error is likely to be caused by the Excel column name which contains an invalid or non-standard character which is causing the flow to error:
Try using a simpler column name in Excel containing text only, such as "Senior Team Manager", then update the flow.

Ellis
____________________________________
If I have answered your question, please mark the post as Solved.
If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
KeerthiRaj96 66 on at

Like (0)

Report

HI @ekarim2020 ,

Thank you so much for your patience 😊 and sharing the detailed explanation. The flow worked well without any errors. You saved my deadline!

One last query - Kindly suggest some ideas to create same item only one time (to avoid duplication), since whenever run the flow with same details it runs many times .

Thanks for your support in advance!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Ellis Karim 11,683 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report

You will need to use a unique identifier for each row data, such as a RowId as we see in the example below:
The SharePoint List will also store the RowID. If the RowID already exists in the SharePoint list - we don't want to create a new record, we want to update it (or do nothing):
Here a rough high-level example of such a flow:

Ellis

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
KeerthiRaj96 66 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @ekarim2020 ,

This worked perfectly. Thank you so much 😊 for your patience and support once again!.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No