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Flow expression to limit number of characters pulled from List column

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Posted on by Elevis

Hello,

I have a flow that generates an email and displays certain information from select columns in a SharePoint list. The Notes column has quite a bit of text and we want to limit the number of characters that are displayed, e.g. the email would show only the first 500 characters from the Notes field.

I've looked online but can't find an example of an expression. I'm also new to this so am struggling trying to figure out the exact language.

Can someone help?

Thanks.

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Building flows

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Ellis Karim 11,816 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Elevis

You can use the substring function: Reference guide for expression functions - Azure Logic Apps | Microsoft Learn

For example:

You can check the length of the string output by the substring function using the length() function:

"The sun dipped below the horizon, casting a warm orange glow across the tranquil countryside. As the daylight faded, the nocturnal creatures began to stir, their presence felt in the rustle of leaves and the distant hoot of an owl. In the village below, lights flickered on one by one, illuminating the winding streets and quaint cottages. The scent of wood smoke wafted through the air, mingling with the earthy fragrance of damp soil. In the distance, a lone figure made their way along a dirt trac"

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Elevis 25 on at

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Thanks. Let me know if I'm oversimplifying this. Here's the setup I have. If the Notes field has been changed, the email is generated. Can I add an expression to the email body to get the same result?

Rick

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Ellis Karim 11,816 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Elevis ,

Yes, you can enter the expression directly into the email Body:

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Elevis 25 on at

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Hi @ekarim2020,

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it. I got it to generally work but there are some odd things happening.
First, it's returning only about half of the 500 characters - around 235 when the limit is 500 and 267 when I upped the limit to 1,000. Also, in a few instances it cut the characters short and returned formatting code. Here's an example:

"2/14/24 - This is a test. This is a test. <span style="font-family:Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);display:inline !import".

We're using Enhanced Rich Text in the column so I'm thinking that is "throwing it off". I did a test and created a Notes2 column with only plain text and that returned 500 characters. So the Enhanced Rich Text is probably the culprit.

Is there any to tweak the expression to use Enhanced Rich Text and avoid the issues I outlined? Or is this just one of the "drawbacks" of using Enhanced Rich Text?

Rick

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