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Unable to get "Does Not Contain" in "Current Item" to Evaluate Properly

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Posted on by TF_L

I'm a bit stuck on a pretty complicated Flow I've been building.

The part I can't think of how to troubleshoot further is a conditional For Each that doesn't seem to be evaluating properly:

To add some context, the "Apply to Each" runs on a list of numbers, 1 ~ 181, one number at a time. If the Condition Evaluates to True, it will then append the number to a 2nd Variable.

Basically, the logic is "If List A [Current Item] is not found in List B, append [Current Item] to List C".

However, the Conditional checks are always incorrect. The List B variables are Array variables which likewise hold a list of numbers. In this case, List B contains "1", "12", among others. However, the Condition always evaluates to True, regardless of what is in List B. Automate gives no feedback on what the evaluation is actually doing, only that it results in True, which doesn't help.

I have List B as the entire list rather than individual items in the list, because comparing each item would improperly compare the sequences (List B might have 1,8,12, and it would compare that to 1,2,3).

Is there a better way to compare lists? This method seems inadequate and also faulty.

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TF_L 23 on at

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Re: Unable to get "Does Not Contain" in "Current Item" to Evaluate Properly

Wonderful, that worked. Thank you for your help!
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ManishSolanki 15,085 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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Re: Unable to get "Does Not Contain" in "Current Item" to Evaluate Properly

Hi @TF_L

Pls try reverse. Instead, trying covert to string & perform comparison. I had also faced the same issue with array of int but worked when I changed to string array.

If this helps & solves your problem, please remember to give a 👍 and accept my solution as it will help others in the future.
TF_L 23 on at

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Re: Unable to get "Does Not Contain" in "Current Item" to Evaluate Properly

Hello @ManishSolanki ,

The List B variable does contain the list in number form:

I was ready to dismiss your comment, but it made me think about List A.

List A gets the numbered list from a SP Column which I just remembered comes in as a string.

Unfortunately, the SP Column that has the numbers is the "Title" column so it is stuck as a string. Bad planning on my part.

I used an int() expression when appending them to List A to begin with, and now List A and List B are both numbers:

Unfortunately, however, the problem persists. The condition always evaluates to "True", despite List B having values.
ManishSolanki 15,085 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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Re: Unable to get "Does Not Contain" in "Current Item" to Evaluate Properly

Hi @TF_L

If left side of condition contains the number in string form, then you need to type cast the right-side operand to string to make them compatible for comparison. Here is an example:

string(item())

If this helps & solves your problem, please remember to give a 👍 and accept my solution as it will help others in the future.