The expression ... is not valid

[Anonymous]

I am tryin to use "Copy data between two SharePoint lists " flow and followed the steps at

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/copying-using-filtering/  but I ran into "The expression ... is not valid" error.

I am using SHarePoint online. I have two lists:

Source List fields:

Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 3| ...

Bw Tools Number | Calibrated Date | Out of Service (Yes/No)| ...

Target List fields:

Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 3 | ...

BW Tools Number | Notes | When updated | ...

 What I am trying to achieve is if any item is added or modified in source list and Out of Service field is YES,

add that item in the destination list matching field "BW Tools Number".

Here is the error message:

"message": "The expression \"'A02.MTW.008'  equal 'BW Tools Number'\" is not valid.\r\nclientRequestId: 5e3444ae-"

What am I doing wrong? Any help is appreciated.

[v-yuazh-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @ yugpatel,

Could you please share a screenshot of the configuration of your flow?

Which action run failed in your flow with the error that you mentioned?

The error told that the BW Tools Number with value "A02.MTW.008" is not valid.

Please check if every BW Tools Number in the Source List have a BW Tools Number with the same value in the Target List.

I would offer you a workaround to update the item in the Target List when the BW Tools Number is exist in the Target List, and if the BW Tools Number is not exist in the Target List , create a new item in the Target List.

The screenshot of the flow as below:

When an Item is created or modified in the Source List, if the BW Tools Number is exist in the Target List, the flow would update the item in the Target List as screenshot below:

When an Item is created or modified in the Source List, if the BW Tools Number is not exist in the Target List, the flow would create the item in the Target List as screenshot below:

Regards,
Alice Zhang

[Anonymous]

Thanks Alice,

I will try to work on your suggestion. I am trying figure out how to upload screen shots. I normally use photobucket but it did not work.

[Anonymous]

Your solution worked but I had to change my BW Tools Number field in source list from lookup type to single line text.

With look up field type, I kept getting "Bad Gateway" error and a serch for "Bad Gateway" revealed in one of the post that lookup field type is not supported by SharePoint Flow YET.

Lessons learned.

Thanks for your solution.

[Chewitt-1877]

Hi,

Im trying to do something similar but I am using a sharepoint list as the source and a document library as the target.

the flow only has to run the one time to add metadate from the list to the document library.

1. When a file is created or modified in sharepoint it triggers the flow

2. the filename is passed to get items from list

3. The true output of condition modified or created filename = sharepoint list file name is to update the file properties with column data from the list

each filename is unique and is contained in the sharepoint list, a column contains the full name and extension i.e. "100-010.xls" another column contains the name with out extension i.e. "100-010", the columns in the sharepoint list are  single line of text.

when the flow runs in test, I can see the filename i.e. 100-010.xls is passed to the get items from the trigger.

the output from the get items, returns a 400 bad request, the expression \"100-010.xls\" is not valid.

I've tried different data filters from the trigger in get items but still the same bad request

The filename defintely exists in the sharepoint list, I can't see why it won't find it.

where am i going wrong?

[Chewitt-1877]

[Chewitt-1877]

showing input / output of get items