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Updating past records in a SharePoint list

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

I created a Flow that updates a column when activated. But I cannot seem to get it to update any past records, only when new records are created. I need to update a lot of older records, do I need to create a different flow or will modifying my "update" flow work?

What am I missing here?

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ScottShearer 25,331 Most Valuable Professional on at

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It sounds like "When an Item is Created" trigger rather than the "When an item is created or modified" trigger.

You need to use the "When an item is created or modified" trigger to have your Flow fir when an existing item is modified.

Scott
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That is true, I used, when an items is created, not when an items is created or modified.

I rebuilt the flow, now how exactly do I trigger it? Do I need to go into each record?
ScottShearer 25,331 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Yes, you need to make a change to each record to trigger the Flow.

If your goal is an update of each record, you probably want to use a Button trigger. When you click the button, you can use a Get Items action and then loop through each item and make changes as appropriate.

Alternatively, it is very easy to use MS Access to connect to you SharePoint list. You could probably create an Update query to make the changes your want with little effort..
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I actually just hit quick edit in the list, changed a couple of things and saved the list and it worked. Still the one-by-one record was a pain, I'd have to have a different strategy if I had 1000's of items to update.
ScottShearer 25,331 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Another strategy is to use a button to retrive items from the list. Set a condition and update the items as appropriate.

If you take this approach, note that you may need to make some configuration changes to the Get Items action as it will limit you to 100 items by default. Also, there is a 5000 item limit when you are looping through items.

Scott