How to View Sample Data for a SharePoint Online List
When you're building a Power Automate flow, a Power BI report, or testing a form against a list, it helps to see a few real rows of data — the actual shape and values — rather than guessing from the column names alone.
Method 1: Open the list view
The most obvious option: open the list itself and scroll through a few items. This works, but it's slow if the list has many columns (you'll be scrolling horizontally) or if you specifically need to see values for hidden/less common fields not shown in the default view.
Method 2: Export to Excel
List settings > Export to Excel gives you a full data dump you can inspect in a spreadsheet. Reliable for a thorough look, but it's a multi-step process and downloads a file you then have to open and clean up just to eyeball a few rows.
Method 3: REST API
https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/yoursite/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('YourList')/items?$top=5Returns raw JSON for the first five items — useful if you're already scripting, but not a quick glance-and-check option.
Method 4: One click on the page
SPO-Assist shows sample data directly on the page you're viewing, so you can quickly check what real values look like across all fields — including ones not shown in your current view — without exporting or querying anything.
Why this matters for flow and form building
A common source of broken Power Automate flows is assuming a field's real values match what you expect — a choice field with trailing spaces, a lookup that's sometimes empty, a date field storing UTC instead of local time. Checking a handful of real rows before you build the flow's logic catches these before they become a debugging session later.