Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi Powerapps developer team,

Can we create auto-increment column(serial number) in SharePoint same as Excel whenever we create a item . suppose if I delete a item i want to be in serial number

Example : I Delete 99 item and 100 record/item should automatically become 99 number in an serial number order

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Power Apps Pro Dev & ISV

What you're describing there is the functionality of a Row Number, not a Serial Number.

Yes, SharePoint absolutely can auto-generate an incremented number for each row in a List, but to have that number automatically decrement when rows get deleted would be what's known as an "anti-pattern." That is:

when you assign a unique number to a row, systems and people that need to work with that data expect to be able to rely on that number. They should be able to reasonably expect that if Blue Nike Hightops have Serial Number 12345 today, they will still be 12345 tomorrow, and next week, and next year. This is the whole point of giving them a Serial Number.

Now, there is also a reason to have Row Numbers, which behave just the way you describe, but there is no need to put them in the database. Consider this: right now you're thinking about these numbers being in order when the list is sorted by when the rows were created, right? What if the list was sorted alphabetically instead? Would the numbers be any use to people all jumbled and out of order? I think it's likely the functionality you're looking for is not an inherent attribute of the row, but an attribute of the presentation layer.