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Posted on by CU19032123-0

Hello,

I'm building a flow where I need to compare whether the current date is equal to a specific date.

I ran a test and compared if ticks(utcNow()) is equal to ticks(utcNow()).

It returned FALSE.
It should return TRUE, right?

Can you help me?

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CU27030035-0 105 on at

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That's right

By using the Ticks function you measured in nano seconds

So time had passed between it calculating both values (like 3 nano seconds) so the values were not equal e.g. is 11:55:23AM = 11:55:25AM

It literally took a second to calculate so the values were different

Assuming the dates your trying to compare one is a stored date and one is the current date

Use the convert time zone control (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/convert-time-zone) to get your UTC now into the correct regional formatting

and then put your other value against it (if its in the same format, if not format it so they are)

then you should get the desired comparison

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11manish 3,333 on at

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In Microsoft Power Automate, this behavior is expected.

Why it returns FALSE

utcNow() is evaluated each time it’s called

So both sides have slightly different timestamps (milliseconds difference)

Result = FALSE

Best fix

Store the value once:

Initialize variable → varNow = utcNow()

Then compare:

ticks(variables('varNow')) = ticks(variables('varNow'))

If comparing dates only

formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'yyyy-MM-dd')
=
formatDateTime('2026-03-20', 'yyyy-MM-dd')

Calling utcNow() twice → different values

Store once or compare only the date part

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CU19032123-0 4 on at

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@11manish It worked perfectly!

Thank you guys!

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