How to rename SharePoint list(s) using Power Automate flow

“I need to rename SharePoint list(s), can I avoid the manual work by building a Power Automate flow that would do it for me?”

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There’re many actions using the SharePoint connector in Power Automate, but most of them are related to items or documents. It has no action that would allow you to change any settings on a list. The only available list related actions are ‘Get lists’, ‘Get lists and libraries’ and ‘Get list views’. All of them just return information, none of them does an update.

To update a list, in this situation to change its name, you’ll have to use an HTTP request.

Renaming the list (or library)

The HTTP request needs 3 pieces of information. The first one is the site address, the second one is the current list name, and the last one is the new list name. The request then goes as below:

Method: POST

Uri: _api/web/lists/getByTitle('<current list name>')

Headers:
{
  "Accept": "application/json;odata=verbose",
  "Content-Type": "application/json;odata=verbose",
  "IF-MATCH": "*",
  "X-HTTP-Method": "MERGE"
}

Body:
{
    "__metadata": {
        "type": "SP.List"
    },
    "Title": "<new list name>"
}

Note: <…> are placeholders, replace them including the < and >. Check this blog post if the HTTP returns ‘List does not exist’ error.

Renaming multiple lists / libraries at once

The HTTP request above will rename one list. If you’d like to rename multiple lists in the same flow, you shouldn’t do it by adding an HTTP request for each list. It’s much better to use a configuration list similar to the one used for copying files between libraries and take the information from there. A simple SharePoint list with 3 columns for the 3 pieces of information.

Once you have all the information in the list you can get all the rows and use them in the HTTP request. The flow below will take all the lists in the configuration and rename then one by one.

Summary

As already mentioned in the post on copying pages between SharePoint sites, flows are not limited to repeated tasks. You can build a simple Power Automate flow also for one time tasks, e.g. to rename SharePoint list(s). And even though there’s no action to do that, there’s always an HTTP request that’ll do the task.

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