Check if the created sharepoint item is a duplicate based on the CreatedBy + Created date

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Posted on by johnjohnPter

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I want to implement a power automate flow that get triggered when an item is created, and it should check if there is a existing item created by the same user and on the same date, if so to delete the duplicate item and send an email to the user that the item was deleted since it sis a duplicate.

now we will have users accessing the list from different timezones.. so what is the formula inside "Get Items" to get the duplicate items? i will depend on the built-in fields; Created & CreatedBY.. any advice?

Thanks

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Chriddle 8,672 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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If I were you, I would try changing the requirement from "on the same date" to something like "within the last 24 hours".

Then it's a simple odata filter.

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David_MA 14,090 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Is your only criteria for the item being a duplicate is that it be created by the same user and the same day? If so and none of the other fields matter, you can do this:

Create a flow that is triggered when a new item is added.

I think for this to work effectively, you will need to go into the settings of the trigger and set the concurrency to 1.

Add a Get items action

Use the following filter query to get items created by the user on the same day: Author/EMail eq '@{triggerOutputs()?['body/Author/Email']}' and (Created ge '@{startOfDay(utcNow(),'yyyy-MM-dd')}' and Created lt '@{formatDateTime(addDays(startOfDay(utcNow()), 1), 'yyyy-MM-dd')}')

Set order by to Created desc

Add a condition to check how many items are found and if it is greater than 0:

You can use this expression: length(outputs('Get_items')?['body/value'])

Then on the yes side of the condition, add a Delete item action and set the Id value to the ID from the trigger.

The flow will look like this:

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johnjohnPter 1,849 Season of Giving Solutions 2025 on at

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@@@David_MA

ok thanks will try your approach and let you know the result.Thanks

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johnjohnPter 1,849 Season of Giving Solutions 2025 on at

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@Chriddle

Can yuo please advice why it will be easier ? and the requirment is on the same date,, this what the client ask for

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David_MA 14,090 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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All dates in SharePoint are stored in UTC format using the ISO8601 standard, so the time zones do not matter. The conversion to different time zones is just so you can see what time it is in your time zone compared to the current UTC time, which is currently 8:16 PM.

If you wanted to see what time this is for US Eastern time, you would use the convert time zone action, and it would return 3:16 PM (UTC -5). If you want to do what @Chriddle suggested with a rolling 24-hour period, you will change the date portion of the filter query to where the Created date is ge to formatDateTime(addHours(utcNow(), -24), 'yyyy-MM-dd')

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Chriddle 8,672 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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The date depends on the time zone.
Therefore, it is possible that from one user's perspective two items were created on consecutive days, but from another user's time zone perspective these items are from the same day (and vice versa).

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