Forum Discussion
Find and replace part of an item in a SharePoint List
I thought a Flow might be the easiest way, but honestly, you can just utilize a view and the grid view to update the items. Unless you are talking insane amounts of items. You can create a view, use edit view, and under filter, choose the column then contains and ER. Save and then you get a list of all ER for that column. You can click edit in grid view, then you could if the list fits on the page (100?) you can copy that entire column of data out to excel, do you're replace, then copy the data and paste it over the columns. You could easily create a new column next to the existing one to hold those values as a test to make sure it works as well before trying that change.
You could do this in chunks with the view as well if there are lots of items or you're other alternitive is utilizing flow, and a combo of get items, a condition with update item action using replace expression.
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 UserGreat 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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