Delete a large number of rows in Sharepoint list, limitation

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Posted on by Yvonzim

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I have searched the internet but cant find out how to delete more than 1000 rows in a sharepontlist with flow.

I do read about a limitation of 5000 rows and a certain amount of API calls but in my case flow only deletes 1000 rows and then stops working.

This is the flow with an Odata filter :

addDays(utcnow('yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ'),-90)

it deletes all rows where Created date is older than 90 days.

a) how can i prevent the flow to stop after 1000 rows.

b) the list can be far more than 5000 rows after a month, is this the best way to store data or should i try an other solution like Dataverse? I have an E5 license.

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Building flows

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Paulie78 8,422 Moderator on at

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I suspect the problem is that your Get Items action is only returning 1,000 rows, and therefore the delete action only delete's 1,000 rows.

This method will be very slow. I did a video and blog post about how to delete items quickly using only a single action. Check it out and see if it works for you:

https://www.tachytelic.net/2021/06/power-automate-delete-sharepoint-items/

Blog: tachytelic.net

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PaulieM/videos

If I answered your question, please accept it as a solution 😘

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abm abm 32,865 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Yvonzim

You can use the pagination method to retrieve more than 5000 records. There are lots of articles already exists so I don't want to explain more on this.

Please have a look at the below links.

Get more than 5000 items from SharePoint with Power Automate (tachytelic.net)

https://alextofan.com/2019/08/22/how-to-get-more-than-5000-item-from-sharepoint-online-in-flow/

Not sure why it stopping after 1000 rows. What error are you getting? If you run again what happens?

Try to implement the pagination method and see whether that resolves or not.

Thanks

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RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@Yvonzim by the way your filter query is wrong, it should be lt not gt if you are deleting items older than 90 days.

Rob
Los Gallardos
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Yvonzim 242 on at

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@abm
Tnx for the links.

It gives no error just stops after 1000 rows, i will follow @Paulie78 his adivice.

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Yvonzim 242 on at

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@RobElliott

Tnx for the correction, weird thing it does delete the right rows untill now, but i will keep this in mind if something goes wrong.

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