could you maybe rather describe what business logic you'd like to achieve?

some might eg. recommend some different/better approach?

what's eg. the reason you need to copy the same text from one field to the other? and to have one extra flag there is a content in the field.

so far it looks to me that simple calculated list fields might handle both of the functionalities - show some part(s) of text of other field as well as make a flag if there is any content in the other field.

Hi Marian,

Many thanks for your reply. So here's my logic since we need email notifications every time the comments (multiline field) has been updated I'm struggling to capture that update in a notification that why I went down the following path:

Created a workflow accommodating for the Comments update

With this conditional start (modified) previous comment not equals comments

Copy comment to wf-last-comment

Update flag wf-comments-exist

Then in another workflow that managed New Items, Status updates and Comments

To Run New Items and modified items

Run if wf-comments-exist equals Yes

Send notification including the wf-last-comment line item

Update wf-comments-exist to No.

The existing logic is causing lots of problems especially with the unknown error and issue where it's trying to update one or more columns.

I think you do not need to copy some recent updates to a separate field just to send them in notification at all.

that should be possible to handle within simple workflow.

to come up with some suggestion could you clarify

- is comment field reach text enabled or simple plain text?

- how do you have configured 'Append Changes to Existing Text' option on comment field?

- how do you determine what's the last change in the field? do you have any special format/marks....

- could you post some sample how does your comment content looks like

Hi Marion,

Thanks for your response:

The comments field is set to Rich text (Bold, italics, text alignment, hyperlinks)

Append Changes to Existing Text is set to Yes.

The Workflow is set as modified conditional (Previous Comments) does not Equal Comments.

Please see the attached screenshot of the field and workflow.

ok.

so as I've said, I think this should be manageable with single workflow.

I think you just need to extend your workflow start condition by a check that comments is not empty. that will filter out all the changes to the item that do not change comments field itself.

then you will not need to save and compare previous and current value within workflow and/or set some flag fields but directly perform the 'change' logic (2nd workflow).