SharePoint 2013 Workflow write to lookup field not working

Question

We moved a couple of lists from a SharePoint installation to SharePoint online, and I have to copy some workflows as well.

They are SharePoint 2010 workflows on the old SP installations, so I started "translating" them to SharePoint 2013 workflows, since that's the only option I have on the new site.

The main part of the workflow is exactly the same, the only difference is, that in 2013, there's a Stage wrapped around the Steps.

The inner logic is unchanged, while the list structure is unchanged as well.

There's a lookup field on the list, where I look up some data from a Customer data list. This field is what gets populated from the workflow.

Here's the workflow:

It get's an Input string was not in a correct format... error after Step3, when writing in the Lookup address local variable into the lookup field.

At Step3 I set the Lookup address to the following value:

[%Variable: Lookup address%];#[%Variable: ProjectID%]

This setting works in 2010 workflows without any problem, but it's giving me the format error in this setup.

Any ideas where this error can come from?

Answer 1

You should use 2010 workflow. It only works in workflows that uses SharePoint workflow 2010 platform type.

SharePoint Online still supports SharePoint workflow 2010 platform type.

Answer 2

Try setting the lookup using the ID rather than the lookup value - this is much more robust.

If I understand your scenario correct you simply input the value project ID into the project number lookup field.