Have you ever needed to update just one field in a SharePoint list based on a specific condition? I recently had to handle this in an Employee Records SharePoint list. The task was straightforward: when the Employee Status needed to change to “Inactive,” it should happen only when the End of Contract date was updated—without affecting any other data in the list.
In Power Automate, I discovered a simple and effective way to achieve this. If you’re dealing with a similar scenario, I will tell you how to update only one field in a SharePoint list item using Power Automate in this tutorial.
Update Only One Field in a SharePoint List Item Using Power Automate
For this example, I have taken the SharePoint list named Employee Records, which contains various fields. Among them, there will be two columns:
- Employee Status = Choice
- End of Contract = Date and time
Whenever any user edits or changes the end-of-contract date, then that time, the employee status will be InActive mode. Let’s see how to do this.
Now follow the below steps:
1. Log in to Power Automate, select Automated Cloud Flow, choose the When an item is created or modified trigger, and click Create to proceed.
2. Add Get changes for an item or a file (properties only) action to identify what fields were modified in the SharePoint list item to determine if the End of Contract field was updated.
Provide below parameters:
- Site Address: Your SharePoint site
- List Name: Employee Records
- ID: Select dynamic content ID
- Since: Select dynamic content Created
This action will track changes to the item’s fields, ensuring that only the relevant fields are updated.
3. Add a Condition action to Check if the End of Contract Field Was Modified
In the Condition action, use the below expression to check if the End of Contract field has been modified:
outputs('Get_changes_for_an_item_or_a_file_(properties_only)')?['body/ColumnHasChanged/EndofContract'] is equal to ture
4. In the Ture branch of the condition (if End of Contract is modified), add the Update item action.
- Site Address: Your SharePoint site
- List Name: Employee Records
- ID: Select dynamic content ID
- EmployeeStatus: Select the variable Inactive.
This ensures that only the EmployeeStatus field is updated while other fields stay intact.
Run the Flow to Update Only One Field in a SharePoint List Item
Save and run the flow. Then, go to the SharePoint list and change the End of Contract field.
After the flow runs successfully, verify that the EmployeeStatus field is updated to “Inactive” and that no other fields have been changed.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, I covered how to update only one field in a SharePoint list item using Power Automate. By setting up a flow triggered when an item is modified, we tracked changes to the “End of Contract” field. When this field was updated, the flow ensured that only the “Employee Status” field was changed to “Inactive,” leaving all other fields unchanged.
You may like the following tutorials:
- Create Hyperlink Dynamic Content in Power Automate
- Use Append to String Variable Action in Power Automate
- Get More Than 100 Items Using The Get Items Action in Power Automate
- Add Item to SharePoint List Using Power Automate
After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.
