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I have a list in SharePoint where users can add requests, assign it to a user, and a workflow runs in the background to notify the user via email when something has been assigned to them.

Unfortunately we've had issues with MS Flow recently, so I was forced to build the workflow initially using SharePoint Designer (although I believe the principles should still be the same). So apologies for appearing old fashioned here.

SharePoint is very awkward when it comes to workflows that trigger only when a single field is changed and not the entire list item. Here is a screenshot of what I have in place, essentially it will only send an email if the 'assigned to' field has changed to a new person's name. The workflow triggers every time the list item is modified.

enter image description here

This workflow works pretty well, however, we have a big problem when users are adding attachments to the list item. Every time I add a new attachment, it's triggering this workflow and sending the email. I'm not really sure why, because the email should only send if the assigned to name has changed, but simply adding an attachment is causing the email to send. It means if users attach 5 documents in a row, the assigned to person receives 5 of the same email.

Does anyone know why this might be happening?

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  • Now that's realy odd. Your workflow is perfectly fine from what I can tell (also this is the correct way to deal with changes in selected fields only). Can you try to log the values of the two assigned to fields along with the value from the attachment field?
    – Morten K
    Aug 14 '19 at 9:41
  • When you say to log the value from the attachment field what do you mean by this? Would this just be a true or false value depending on whether attachments are there or not?
    – Toby
    Aug 14 '19 at 13:39
  • Im actually not sure to be honest. I would expect it to be some form af ID or GUID of the attechements.
    – Morten K
    Aug 15 '19 at 5:14
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Did the issue occur when the “AssignedTo(Before)” and “AssignedTo” are empty?

If so, you should trigger the workflow when the field “AssignedTo” is not empty.

And the field “AssignedTo” is the people and group column type, then you should convert the field “AssignedTo” to string and check if it is empty in workflow.

There is a demo for your reference, you should change to your columns.

enter image description here

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  • When the user fills in the form the 'Assigned To' field is mandatory, meaning there wouldn't be a situation where these fields are empty. My assumption is that if they were empty, the email workflow would fail because it has no name to send the email to. The problem I'm facing is that this workflow should only be triggering if the 'assigned to' field has changed to a different name. The only possible way the email will send is if this field has changed. However, for some reason adding an attachment is causing this email to be sent again, despite the 'assigned to' field having not changed.
    – Toby
    Aug 15 '19 at 14:38
  • To troubleshoot the issue, you could create a new workflow to check if the same issue will occur.
    – Amy_MSFT
    Aug 16 '19 at 3:37

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