To trigger this, you could copy/paste the values in the field that is being watched. Don’t know if it’ll work, but here’s an example.
Let’s say your automation is: when “Checkbox” (checkbox field) is checked, mark “Status” (single-select field) as “Done”. After creating the automation, any new record which meets the above conditions get updated, but let’s say you have 100+ records already created. So, what you can try is copy/paste all the values of the “Checkbox” field onto itself. Then, maybe it’ll trigger the automation on those records.
For me when I faced this problem, I manually changed the “Status” field of previous records to “Done” 
Correct. An automation triggered by record changes will only fire based on changes made after the automation is activated. The workaround by @Jarvis is one way around it, though I’m not certain that copy-paste will work because the field contents aren’t changing. What I’ll sometimes do is select a field (or group of fields), delete the contents to force the records to not meet the trigger condition, then Undo to bring the data back, and all of the affected records should trigger at once. Naturally one should be aware of how many records are triggering so that plan automation limits aren’t exceeded, but it’s a quick way to batch-process records.
This is old, but if like me you found this via a search, I came up with a way to do a mass update on-demand:
- Use a time trigger -- one-time, at today’s date and a few minutes from now
- Find records -- set this to get records that match the conditions to which you wish to apply your updates. Example: status is Confirmed, checkbox is (not checked)
- “Repeat for each in List of Records]” -- run an action for each record found
- Update record -- set checkbox to ochecked]
Run it once, then delete the automation (or leave it -- it will never run again in any case).
Hope this helps!
Hi there, I’d like to create an automation that, when triggered manually, appends all records that match certain conditions to a Google Sheet (that I then apply built-in formulas to in the sheet).
My first attempt was to choose the trigger “When record matches conditions” but that only seems to fire for when a new or updated record matches conditions, not for when an existing one does.
How might I set up the conditions and action and then for a trigger be able to just click a button like “run” or turn it on? Is there another way to do this?
To answer your question, use the checkbox on any record to run this, set the automation trigger to match on the condition of that checkbox being checked. Before the automation ends have an Update record uncheck that checkbox. Now setup a button wherever you want to update that box to check it. It will turn the second color and text while it runs so I usually use gray and “
In progress...” so whoever clicks it sees its “running” then when the automation ends it returns to the “Submit” or whatveer you name the button.
