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Syncing 'Person or Group' column works for single-selection column, but not multi-selection column

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Posted on by BC-20031747-0

I have two lists:

When a user adds a new item to List_1, I want a flow to automatically add the item to List_2.

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The above flow works fine when the People_ columns in both lists are single-selection only. But when I change the People_ columns to allow multiple selections (in both lists), the flow fails.

Flow Checker > Action 'When_an_item_is_created' failed

The API 'sharepointonline' returned an invalid response for workflow operation 'When_an_item_is_created' of type 'OpenApiConnection'. Error details: 'The API operation 'GetOnNewItems' requires the property 'body/value/0/People_' to be of type 'Object' but is of type 'Array'.'

How can I get this flow to work on multiple-selection 'Person or Group' columns?

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Building flows

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Ellis Karim 12,137 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@BC-20031747-0

In this example I have a person column (multi-select) called Person1 that I want to copy to the Added By column (multi-select):

For an explanation, please see:

How to Update a SharePoint Multi-Select People Column in SharePoint using Power Automate

and

How to Update and Patch a SharePoint People Column Using Power Automate and Power Apps

Ellis Karim
elliskarim.com | LinkedIn | Bluesky
If this solved your issue, please mark it as ✅ Accepted Answer. If it helped, feel free to give it a 🩷 Like!

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Vish WR 3,685 on at

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@BC-20031747-0

The error is expected. When a Person or Group column allows multiple selections, SharePoint returns it as an Array instead of an Object, and the Create item action cannot handle that directly.

The fix is to add a Select action before your Create item step. Set the From field to the People_ value from your trigger, then map out the claims from each item in the array. Use the output of that Select action in your People_Claims field instead of passing the raw trigger token.

If the Select approach does not work cleanly, you can use the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action to write the item via REST API, where multi-person fields expect an array of ID objects like {"Id": 1}, {"Id": 2}. You would still use a Select action to extract those IDs from the trigger output first.

Try the Select action route first as it is the simpler of the two.

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David_MA 14,889 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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You can use this approach:

Create an array variable and leave the default value blank (very important):

Add an apply to each action and point it to the people field from the trigger (this would be the one without email, claims, department, etc. after it). In the example below, this field is named Name.

Then add an append to array variable action to the apply to each and configure it like below. This is where you would choose the email value of the people field. In this example Name Email.

In the update item action, put your people field into array mode and insert the array variable.

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