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How to Notify a Responsible Person When a SharePoint Date Is Over One Year Old

Muhammad Talha Sep 27, 2026 869 views

Question details

The user needs to send an automatic notification to a designated responsible person when a date or calculated column in a SharePoint list becomes older than one year.

Product: SharePoint
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Automating notifications for aging SharePoint list items where standard reminders fail due to the use of calculated date columns.
Observed behavior: Standard SharePoint reminder features are unavailable or do not trigger because the date values are calculated dynamically rather than stored statically.

Before you start

Verify that you have adequate permissions to create and run Power Automate flows for your SharePoint site, and ensure your list contains a valid 'Responsible Person' column configured to capture user email addresses.

Solution 1Recommended

Create a Scheduled Power Automate Flow

Build a scheduled cloud flow that routinely checks SharePoint items and emails the assigned person if the target date exceeds 365 days.

Calculated date columns are generated dynamically upon page load, making them incompatible with SharePoint's out-of-the-box reminder workflows. Setting up a Scheduled Cloud Flow in Power Automate provides a reliable way to bypass this limitation.

Set up a scheduled trigger

Log in to Power Automate, click 'Create' in the left menu, and select 'Scheduled cloud flow'. Name your flow and set the recurrence to run once every day.

Retrieve SharePoint list items

Add a new step and search for the 'Get items' SharePoint action. Select your Site Address and List Name from the dropdown menus.

Apply a filter query

In the 'Get items' action, expand the advanced options. In the 'Filter Query' field, use an OData query such as 'LastUpdated lt '@{addDays(utcNow(), -365)}'' to only retrieve records older than one year.

Send the notification

Add a 'Send an email (V2)' action. In the 'To' field, add dynamic content selecting the 'Responsible Person Email' from the 'Get items' output. Power Automate will automatically wrap this action in an 'Apply to each' loop. Customize the subject and body to complete your reminder setup.

Testing Your Flow: Use the 'Test' button in the upper right corner of Power Automate to run the flow manually. Confirm that emails are successfully routed only to the responsible persons linked to older records.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't I use the standard SharePoint reminder feature for calculated columns?

SharePoint's built-in reminder workflows rely on indexing static date fields. Because calculated columns generate their values on the fly when items are viewed, standard triggers cannot properly index them to fire automated alerts.

Do I need a premium license in Power Automate to connect to SharePoint?

No, the standard SharePoint connector required to retrieve list items and run basic scheduled cloud flows is included in most standard Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription plans.

Can I notify a responsible person via Microsoft Teams instead of email?

Yes. Within your Power Automate flow, you can replace the 'Send an email' action with the 'Post message in a chat or channel' Microsoft Teams action, targeting the Responsible Person's email to send them a direct chat notification.

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