Forum Discussion
Find and replace part of an item in a SharePoint List
Trying to figure it out myself, I can find a "Get Items" but then when I get to the update part, it only offers me Update ITEM. Confusing.
Thank you.
CindyZ you will rarely find a flow that does exactly what you want, it's usually quicker & easier just to build one from blank. And this is not a difficult flow.
I have a SharePoint list with the data provided in the original post:
The trigger is to manually trigger the flow. Then the first action is a SharePoint get items. I've added a filter query to only bring back items that have a value:
Add an apply to each and select value from the dynamic content. Then add a compose action and select the column which has the data you want to change, in my casre it's the Title column.
Next, add another compose action and in the expression tab of the dynamic content box add the following expression:
replace(outputs('ComposeTitle'),'ER','EAR')
That takes the ComposeTitle compose and replaces ER with EAR:
Finally and still inside the apply to each, add an update item and for the column with the changed data select the output of the previous compose:
And this is the result:
Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User
Great solution and very obvious now that you spell it out. I had been manipulating data outside of the SharePoint list via Excel, then updating via flow. This is far more efficient and a lot less room for error removing Excel from the equation. Thanks for the upskill!
- I did not have an account on this website and I took the time to create it just to thank you for sharing this flow, you have no idea of the incredible benefit I got from it, thank you very much
I'm looking to do a similar thing, but am having issues with the Flow (full disclosure--I've never used Flows).
I have a Notes column and want to mass edit changing an error from when data was imported into the list (user did a find/replace in the .CSV file and it was a tad too aggressive, changing things we didn't want to change).
I was able to create the new flow as shown above, and I selected my site address and selected my List in the List Name, however when I click "add dynamic content" it doesn't show any of the columns I have in my list--it just has general fields like name, email, date, city, state, etc, few of which are present in this particular List.
In case if you don't want to "store" the replaced value in column (update actual column value) and fine with showing replaced string in list view (display purpose only - filter/sort will use old values only), you can also replace the substring in text string using SharePoint JSON formatting.
Check this article for detailed information and example: SharePoint: Replace All Occurrences of Substring in a String using JSON Formatting
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Joe_Grover I can see from the cursor that you are in the filter query field. There won't be anything in the dynamic content box for that at this stage, the only items you have are in the manually trigger a flow section. So leave the filter query empty.
What you then need is a Filter Array action. Select value from the dynamic content box and you will then see in the filter field that the columns from your get items are available.
Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super UserOk, thanks. That got me a bit further. I'm almost there, heh.
I need to tweak the steps a bit for what I'm trying to do.
- "ComposeTitle" shows as an invalid reference in my Compose action. The field I want to search for text in is called "Notes," so what would I put in for my expression in the Compose action? For clarity I want to search for a string of text (irrespective of case) and change one of the words. For example, looking for "this is good" and changing it to "this is great".
- In the Update item action, do I add the Outputs to the Notes field?
- And there are some required field in the form. I don't know if I can ignore the warnings that the fields are required (since I don't want to touch those fields) or if I should temporarily disable that requirement in order to run the Flow. This wouldn't be a big deal as nobody should be entering/changing stuff in this List anymore anyway--there just isn't a way to mass-change this after we migrate the data so I'd like to correct it beforehand.
RobElliott Perfect, Rob! Thanks so very much. I'm sure this will help lots of others. And thanks for the affirmation you can seldom find an exact flow. Sometimes it feels that I must be missing the obvious but don't know what I don't know. 🙂
