Let's POWER Automate

From no-code to low-code

Menu
  • Expressions
  • Filters
  • General
  • Application specific solutions
    • Dataverse
    • Excel
    • Forms
    • Outlook
    • Planner
    • Power Apps
    • SharePoint
    • Teams
  • Triggers
  • Ready to use solutions
    • Approval Process Template
    • Task Delegation App
    • The Ultimate Power Automate expressions cheat sheet
    • Power Automate HTTP requests to SharePoint cheat sheet
    • Power Automate HTTP requests to Graph API cheat sheet
  • ABOUT ME
  • Get help with your flow
  • POWER PLATFORM SERVICES
Menu

How to remove old Power Automate approval task(s)

Posted on January 19, 2025February 2, 2025 by Tom

“The users complain about having too many tasks from expired Power Automate flows, can I somehow remove these old task(s)?”


As you probably know, a single instance of a Power Automate flow can run only for 29 and half days. Once it reaches this deadline, the flow will stop. Nothing else will happen. Which can be a problem if it uses any approvals.

Since the Approvals are a separate application, they don’t really care whether a flow is running. There’s a task that’ll stay open until it’s completed, no matter that there’s no flow to continue, no matter that nothing will happen upon completion. How do you deal with such tasks? How do you make sure that users won’t spend time reviewing expired tasks?

Just delete the tasks

The reliable option I found to remove the tasks from the list is to delete the task completely. What users see in their list of approval tasks is the combination of information from the Approval and Approval Request tables. If the entry doesn’t exist, users won’t see it.

With the assumption that all tasks older than 30 days that are still active (statecode = 0) are expired, start by filtering all such tasks in the Approval table.

IMPORTANT: make sure that you don’t have any custom solution that’s still processing those tasks! If you do don’t just delete them! Also, be sure to delete only the Active tasks, not those that were already completed!

createdon lt '@{addDays(utcNow(),-30)}' and statecode eq 0
Power Automate remove old task

Once you filter the approvals, delete them.

Power Automate remove old task

No entry in the Approvals table, no entry in the user’s Approvals app.

Summary

The only reliable solution I found to remove old Power Automate task(s) is to just delete them. Find the expired task using filters and delete the rows. Once it’s gone from the Approval table it’ll be gone also from the Approvals applications of the users. Just be very careful to not delete any of the completed tasks.


πŸš€ Master Power Automate

Join 2,000+ professionals getting actionable Power Automate tutorials, solutions, cheat sheets & tips every week.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

πŸš€ Master Power Automate

Join 2,000+ professionals getting actionable Power Automate tutorials, solutions, cheat sheets & tips every week.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

Working on an Approval process?

Use the Approval Process Template and the Task Delegation App to skip the hard part and deploy a fully functional approval solution on a SharePoint list in minutes! And then the next one, and the next one...

Approval Template Preview ✨ Learn more ✨

Turn ideas into flows with ease!

Grab the complete Power Automate Cheat Sheet Bundleβ€”everything you need to master expressions, SharePoint HTTP calls, and Graph API in Power Automate.

Cheat Sheet Bundle Preview ✨ Get the Cheat Sheets

Didn't find what you were looking for?
Need to adjust a solution to fit your needs?
Or would you just like to get an assistance from somebody with thousands of hours of experience with Power Automate?

Power Automate blogs worth visiting

Damien Bird
Dennis (Expiscornovus)
Paul Murana

©2025 Let's POWER Automate | Theme by SuperbThemes