Approvals

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Posted on by JS-11041628-0

Hi, I have enabled the built in approvals on a sharepoint list.

Is it possible to update a column in the list using a Flow without resetting the Approval status?

I'm reading the list and sending an email based on conditions I then want to update a column with the date an email was sent.

Currently when I do this it resets the status to 'Not submitted'. I would like to leave it unchanged and stay at whatever status it was.

Thanks

John

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Building flows

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SwatiSTW 741 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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When you update a SharePoint list item that has content approval turned on, the approval status resets to "Not submitted" or "Pending". You want to update a column (like EmailSentDate) using Power Automate without changing the approval status.

1. Use Power Automate to get the list item using "Get item" action
2. Do not use "Update item" action because it resets the approval status
3. Use "Send an HTTP request to SharePoint" action instead
4. Set method to POST
5. Set URI to _api/web/lists/getbytitle('YourListName')/items(ID)
   Replace YourListName with the actual list name and ID with dynamic item ID
6. Set Headers like below json
   {
   "Accept": "application/json;odata=verbose",
   "Content-Type": "application/json;odata=verbose",
   "IF-MATCH": "*",
   "X-HTTP-Method": "MERGE"
   }
7. Set Body to update only the needed column
   Example json is below

   {
   "EmailSentDate": "2025-04-11T00:00:00Z"
   }
8. This updates the field without resetting the approval status

Use this method whenever you need to update SharePoint items with content approval on and want to keep the current status unchanged

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JS-11041628-0 2 on at

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Hi,

Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately I can't quite get this to work. using your example I get this error:

An entry without a type name was found, but no expected type was specified. To allow entries without type information, the expected type must also be specified when the model is specified

I can resolve this by changing the body to:

{
"__metadata": { "type": "SP.ListItem" },
"BaseTemplate": 100,
"DateReviewEmailSent": "2025-04-14"
}

However this resets the Approval status column back to 'Not Submiited'.

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

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