Clear Multi User field in SharePoint using REST API

I covered most types of fields previously but I didn’t cover the clear multi user field problem in SharePoint Online.

Clearing fields

A while back I wrote a post about clearing fields in Microsoft Flow. For details on how to update fields please look at the previous post.

Clear Multi user fields

I tried all sorts of ways but I kept hit all sorts of failures in my REST API call to SharePoint.

A collection of the errors that I saw:

An unexpected ‘StartObject’ node was found when reading from the JSON reader. A ‘PrimitiveValue’ node was expected.

A node of type ‘PrimitiveValue’ was read from the JSON reader when trying to read the contents of an entity set reference navigation link; however, a ‘StartObject’ or ‘StartArray’ node was expected.

A node of type ‘StartArray’ was read from the JSON reader when trying to read the contents of a resource reference navigation link; however, a ‘StartObject’ node or ‘PrimitiveValue’ node with null value was expected.

It was not until I looked at how to update a multi user field and then combined this with the how to reset a user field that I got to the solution. In my case I’ve got afield called CheckedBy.

Clear Multi User fields in SharePoint using REST API

The important bit in the above screenshot is the setting the Id to -1 and the StringId part of the field to an empty string.

'CheckedById': {
  '__metadata': {
    'type': 'Collection(Edm.Int32)'
  },
  'results': [
    -1
  ]
},
'CheckedByStringId': {
'__metadata': {
  'type': 'Collection(Edm.String)'
},
  'results': [
  '' ]
}

Ok, this is great, problem solved!

Avatar for Pieter Veenstra

By Pieter Veenstra

Business Applications Microsoft MVP working as a Principal Architect at HybrIT Services Ltd. You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from SharePains by Microsoft MVP Pieter Veenstra

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue Reading

%d