Forum Discussion
Highlight or count duplicates in a single Sharepoint List column
RADical6142 Here you go...
Create a variable and connect to your list:
Now, for each item above - check the list to see if that serial number exists anywhere else in that list. If it does, increment a variable. When it's done, update the IsDuplicate field to yes or no.
In the apply to each
- set the count back to 0
- Get the list items for searching
Now add another Apply to each and a condition. The condition: if the Serial Number (in the first Get Items) equals the Serial Number (in the second Get Items), increment the variable. It will always find a match once.
After that apply to each, add another condition that checks to see if the count is greater than 1, set IsDuplicate to Yes, if not, set IsDuplicate to No.
That's it, your list should be updated. Here's a big picture view, beginning to end.
Some thoughts...
- I set this to run as recurrence since it will probably take a long time to run depending on how many items are in your list. You might want to filter that first Get Items to only check items that have been updated since the last time it ran.
- If this is a one-time cleanup, maybe set the Serial Number field in SharePoint to Enforce Unique Values
Here is the json for the Title column.
{"elmType": "div","debugMode": true,"txtContent": "@currentField","style": {"background-color": "=if([$IsDuplicate] == 'Yes', '#FFFFDD', '')"}}
PamDeGraffenreid Thank you for your reply. It doesn't seem to address the problem I'm facing though. The union expression in the link eliminates duplicates. I'm trying to highlight and update duplicate rows.
So basically...highlight the duplicates in the serial number column and/or update the IsDuplicate column for the rows where there are duplicate serial numbers.
This is the current view:
What I'm trying to accomplish:
I don't think there is a way to accomplish this with calculated or lookup columns. It looks like the alternatives are JSON formatting, Power Apps or a Flow. I'm not verse on the former two, so I'm thinking a Flow would be easier. Is there an expression that you know of that will do the opposite of "union" where it only return duplicates? I tried Intersection, but that doesn't work either.
Thanks!
RADical6142 Here you go...
Create a variable and connect to your list:
Now, for each item above - check the list to see if that serial number exists anywhere else in that list. If it does, increment a variable. When it's done, update the IsDuplicate field to yes or no.
In the apply to each
- set the count back to 0
- Get the list items for searching
Now add another Apply to each and a condition. The condition: if the Serial Number (in the first Get Items) equals the Serial Number (in the second Get Items), increment the variable. It will always find a match once.
After that apply to each, add another condition that checks to see if the count is greater than 1, set IsDuplicate to Yes, if not, set IsDuplicate to No.
That's it, your list should be updated. Here's a big picture view, beginning to end.
Some thoughts...
- I set this to run as recurrence since it will probably take a long time to run depending on how many items are in your list. You might want to filter that first Get Items to only check items that have been updated since the last time it ran.
- If this is a one-time cleanup, maybe set the Serial Number field in SharePoint to Enforce Unique Values
Here is the json for the Title column.
{"elmType": "div","debugMode": true,"txtContent": "@currentField","style": {"background-color": "=if([$IsDuplicate] == 'Yes', '#FFFFDD', '')"}}PamDeGraffenreid I have a quick question. I was looking at your soultion and was wondering if you could help me. I have a bunch of duplicates in my sharepoint list and instead of using the delete function I want to use the update function to replace the oldest record and replace by the newest record could you help me at all!
- dspitalny do you manage to get the solution?
PamDeGraffenreid - Thank you for this suggestion. I replicated the steps in the flow since I have a similar use case.
The issue that I am experiencing is that the each line gets updated not just the line that have duplicates. From the best that I can tell, it looks at the line count of the list, and then simply sets the IsDuplicate field to 'yes.'
I would be curious if you have any thoughts and I am happy to provide screenshots of my flow as well.I wanted to follow-up to my earlier response as I have identified a slightly more streamlined solution that circumvents the issue with the count. Basically, it compares both 'Get Items' like PamDeGraffenreid's solution but then trades the count for a condition that compares column values before comparing the ID number of the list item(s).
Namely, If the IDs don't match, it will update a field in the list, whose value I then leverage in the standard MS List conditional formatting (e.g. If column X = Yes then column Y will be formatted 'yellow') to highlight duplicate items.
I appreciate PamDeGraffenreid's approach as it was very insightful. Thanks!
PamDeGraffenreid Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for. I tested it and it works great.
