Update Item deleting other fields that are left blank in the update item flow item

[Anonymous]

We have a flow that for some reason has starting deleting fields from the update item section, we turned on versioning history to confirm that was happening. We went through every piece from PowerApps and SharePoint and it looks like the Update item in all of our flows is the culprit. Has anyone heard of the update item deleting sharepoint field data when it is left blank?

[edgonzales]

@Anonymous 

Hi there.  Just shooting for low-hanging-stuff...but did we confirm that there aren't any spaces or other hidden characters in the "Update" action?  Maybe a screenshot will help.

Keep us posted!

-Ed-

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[Anonymous]

Yes we have confirmed there are no extra spaces, I would provide a screenshot, but we recently removed trying to figure out a different approach. Basically on the Update item all it was matching was the ID field and another field called WARS ID. All other fields were blank.

We use Flow and update item all the time, this is the only flow I have ever seen this happen.

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Do you mean that some fields are not configured but are cleared?

I did a test on my side. If I don't make any settings for the field when configuring Update item action, the field value will be preserved.

However, if you enter a space or a tab in the input box of the field, the field value will be cleared.

Please check if there is a space in the field. If it is, click Backspace to clear the space.

Or to avoid this problem, please fill in the necessary fields with Dynamic content.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Sorry for the late response, we did confirm there are no spaces, and it only happens on certain flows, not all of them. Very odd it seems. I will give the dynamic content a try.

[clcssics]

@Anonymous Did you ever find out what was causing this?

[mboonie]

Hey, all... is there any update on this? I've actually had this start happening with several of my flows, which have been running for many months: if I don't provide a value in the Update action, it sometimes--but not ALWAYS--removes the data instead of leaving it alone. These are fields that have never been defined as Required, and this problem is recent!

[Atarian]

I seemed to find solution: Add any Dynamic content into the field that gives you this problems, save the flow, and remove the Dynamic content by clicking on the cross next to it. This way the field is cleaned completely and will not wipe the existing records.

This worked for me.

You can double-check if you did it correctly, by selecting "Peek code" from the header of the flow step (three dots on the right side where the step name is. In the code you can see what will be updated (in my case, for all the fields that have been wiped out, the code was saying 

"body": {
    "Title": "", 
    "Request": "",

Where Title and Request were names of the fields which were being wiped. After I did the excercise described above, these lines from the code disappeared and the flow no more deleted the content of these two fields.

B.T.W If anyone knows how to edit this flow "code" directly, let me know, as this would be a huge help for me.

Thanks

[mboonie]

Best! Tip! Ever!

[Anonymous]

Amazing Tip, but still, they should improve the connector. 

[thoang858]

Greetings. I am so glad that I am not the only one that was having this same problem. At the same time, it is frustrating. We have contacted Microsoft about this issue earlier on in 2019. We spent over 6 months working with their tier-3 support. It was frustrating that they blamed the issue on us stating because we had migrated the list affected from our SharePoint on-prem environment to O365. Long story short, we were able to replicate the issue with a new list on a different O365 tenant and nothing much came out of it. Just got the run around. 

@Atarian - We found this work-around as well. The only issue with this is that you will have to note this workflow. If there are any future enhancements, meaning that you need to make changes to the workflow in the future, you will need to through the step of adding the Dynamic Content, saving the workflow then removing it.

Another useful tip is to enable versioning on all list using Power Automate. This will help with restoring the deleted data. 

[mwienold]

In regards to using flows with Sharepoint: The best workaround I could come up with is to create a view for your list that explicitly calls out only the fields you want to change. 

In the flow click Advanced options for the Update item and specify the view to use. This should greatly reduce the number of potential fields it wants to update.

[kreid68]

Brilliant!  Thank you 🙂

[tmiller888]

Wow - this is quite the bug.  I've noticed it in a new workflow - that's not production yet luckily.  I have many Update Item actions and now I'm going to have to check them all.  Another option is to use the "Send an HTTP request to SharePoint" action instead.  I believe you might even be able to skip updating required fields with this action.

Substitute your List Name and ItemIDNumber

Uri: _api/web/lists/getbytitle('List Name')/items(ItemIDNumber)/validateUpdateListItem