Combining multiple Excels in Sharepoint into a single Excel file

[tomswaelen]

I have a bunch of Excels that have identical tables (with different contents of course). I want to combine these Excels into one single Excel which has the exact same type of table as the other ones.

The flow below doesn't work, I think I'm not using the correct Sharepoint fields for the list rows action.

Can anyone help me on my way?

[grantjenkins]

For your List rows present in a table, you should use the drop-down to select the Location (SharePoint Site) and Document Library. They should both be the same as what you used in Get files (properties only).

For File you should be using the Full Path property.

How are you thinking of combined the Excel files? Are you going to extract all the data across these Excel files and output to a completely new Excel file that you have? Or are you using one of the existing Excel files and appending to it?

Also, how many items across all Excel files would you have (approximately)?

[tomswaelen]

@grantjenkins I'm thinking of combining all the Excel files in a Sharepoint location into one aggregation file. So not into one of the 'original' files. However, the aggregation Excel is identical to the original files; the only difference is that it should have all the data of the other files in it. After running the flow, the original files should be moved to a new (Archive) location in Sharepoint.

I'm thinking of running this flow every hour or so, so it should never be more than a 20-30 Excel files at a time, maximum.

Is this something that can be done with Power Automate Cloud?

[tomswaelen]

This is the flow I have at the moment, but even without the step to add the content of the single Excel files into the combination Excel, the flow fails.

Am I doing something wrong or is this just not possible with PA Cloud?

[tomswaelen]

Another way to do this, would be to read the contents of Excel attachments and add the content of the table (always the same name) in those attachments to an aggregation Excel on Sharepoint. I have scoured the internet, but I cannot find a cloud flow that would easily do this.

The list rows action asks me for a Sharepoint address, but I need this to be the attachment of the e-mail.

[grantjenkins]

Just to confirm - is you trigger going to be when a new email arrives with attachments. And you need to get the data from those attachments (Excel files) an combine them into a new Excel file? I didn't realize they were coming as attachments in an email before. If you can confirm, then I'll try to write up a complete solution tomorrow (1AM where I am at the moment - so off to sleep now).

[tomswaelen]

@grantjenkins  combining Excels on Sharepoint was actually a workaround I had been thinking about, so yes, the original idea was this:

1. E-mail arrives in a shared mailbox

2. E-mail contains an XLSX or XLSM attachment, which contains a table with always the same name and same columns

3. The contents of the table in this attachment are read and added to an Excel Online file which contains a table with the same columns as the attachments.

4. The e-mail is moved to a 'Processed' folder (I can probably figure this one out myself 😉 )

Another workaround is to have the e-mail body contain the necessary data instead of the attachment, but there are plenty of resources on the internet that explain how to do this.

[grantjenkins]

Hopefully this is what you're looking for. Note that I've got the trigger on my own mailbox as I don't have a Shared mailbox setup. It will save each of the attachments temporarily, retrieve the data, then delete them.

For this example, I've got a folder called Processing within my Documents Library. And within there I have my main Excel file that will get added to over time. It has a Table called Table1 with Name and Age headers.

See full flow below. I'll go into each of the actions.

When a new email arrives will trigger the flow when an email arrives with attachments. I've also set the Subject Filter to only pick up emails with a Subject of 'Processing" - you would have whatever you wanted here.

For the trigger (above) I've also set Concurrency Control to On and set the Degree of Parallelism to 1. This is so that the flow won't run in parallel if we have multiple emails coming in at the same time. It will wait for the running flow to complete, then start the next one.

Apply to each attachment will iterate over each of the attachments.

Create file will use the content from the attachment and create a temporary file within our Processing folder. I've used the following expression to ensure we always get a unique name, so we don't get into conflicts.

concat(
  guid(), 
  '.', 
  slice(items('Apply_to_each_attachment')?['name'], lastIndexOf(items('Apply_to_each_attachment')?['name'], '.'))
)

List rows present in a table retrieves the rows from the file we just created. Note that I've manually typed Table1 assuming the table names will always be the same.

Apply to each row iterates over each of the rows returned, and uses Add a row into a table to add each row into the master (Main.xlsx) file.

Delete item deletes the file that was created (our attachment). Note that I manually typed Documents since it only shows Lists (not Libraries) in the dynamic data.

For testing purposes, I've attached two .xlsx files and one .xlsm files, each with two rows of data.

And the output in our Main.xslx file.

[tomswaelen]

Hi @grantjenkins ,

I've tried replicating this flow, and testing it up until the get rows action, but the flow times out on the apply to each. The trigger works.

Also, in the add rows-step, how do you get the Excel field names in Power Automate? I don't understand as at that time, the flow does not know those names in edit mode?

[grantjenkins]

Using the Test Flow with this type of trigger can be a bit inconsistent (the attachment content can get corrupted).

It's best to send an email each time with attachments and let the flow run, then go into the Flow run itself. to see how it went For testing purposes, I just kept forwarding the email to myself, so it kept the attachments.

[tomswaelen]

@grantjenkins  OK, I'll try again.

But I also do not understand the 'Add row' step. How do you get the field names of the Excel attachment in the dynamic content window? I don't have those. (which seems logical to me, because the field names are 'theoretical' or 'virtual' at that point, the flow does not know these field names)

[grantjenkins]

Ah sorry - because we type in the Table name manually, Power Automate can't infer the column names. In order to get what you need; you would use the following expressions.

item()?['Name']
item()?['Age']

//Format
item()?['Name of your header in Excel']

[tomswaelen]

@grantjenkins  That seems to work, thank you 🙂

One final question, I'd like to move the created file to a separate folder, but I'm unsure how to call the file that has to be moved in the Sharepoint Move File action. 'Name' does not seem to be correct:

Perhaps Path? Or Path/Name?

[grantjenkins]

I'm not sure what you mean by created file? Do you mean the attachments that are temporarily created and then deleted?

[tomswaelen]

Yes, so instead of deleting the file, I'd like to move it to a Processed folder, but I'm unsure on how to call the file that was created in the previous step. 'Name' doesn't seem to work.

[grantjenkins]

I think it would be the Identifier field from Create file.

[tomswaelen]

Hi,

No, tried that. The flow runs up until the 'Move file' step, where it fails.

[grantjenkins]

What is the error message you get?

[tomswaelen]

Apparently, the syntax in the action is correct; I get this error message:

File 'Shared Documents/******************/3d3452d3-2e4a-4f23-a2f3-15157c92f162..xlsx' cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.
clientRequestId: bc122430-8c70-4d9d-8589-077661b1ff0b
serviceRequestId: bc122430-8c70-4d9d-8589-077661b1ff0b