title: SharePoint 2010 Workflow Update Lookup Field on Item
body: <p>I have a SharePoint Designer workflow in 2010. This workflow is associated with a list and when it is run, should copy the Current Item back into the list then update a field in that newly created item with a variable set at initiation of the workflow. Basically it duplicates an item then changes 1 value of the newly created item.</p>
  
  <p>The field that I need to update is a lookup field into another list. For some reason SharePoint does not like this and errors out each time.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried setting the value of the field to the following things, all of which fail when run.</p>
  
  <pre><code>ID of the lookup item
  ID;#VALUE of the lookup item
  VALUE of the lookup item
  1;#201101 which is a hardcoded value I know is correct...just trying to test here
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>At this point, I am out of ideas. Can anyone help?</p>
  
  <p>For more detail the workflow has 1 step with the following actions:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Copy item in Current Item to list at [Parameter:ListURL], Do no Overwrite existing items. Store resulting list item id in [Variable:DuplicateID].</li>
  <li>then set [Variable:Reporting Month ID] to [Reporting Months:ID]. (this is a lookup into Reporting Months list using variable [Variable:Reporting Month] which is set at initiation of workflow).</li>
  <li>then Update item in Current List (the item is determined by [Variable:DuplicateID] and I try to set the value of the Reporting Month field in Current List using various combinations [Variable:Reporting Month ID] and [Variable:Reporting Month]</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>The error I get when the worflow is run is below.</p>
  
  <pre><code>The workflow could not update the item, possibly because one or more columns for the item require a different type of information.
  </code></pre>