Copy all files from one Master folder to multiple other folders every week

[MichaelGSP]

Hi there,

I have a, let's call it, Master folder /xxx/Master

And in the same OfB I have multiple subfolders

/xxx/folder/FolderA 

/xxx/folder/FolderB

etc.

During the week, files get added, changed, deleted. Every Sunday morning at 4am I want all the files in the subfolders match exactly those in the Masterfolder.

My thought was, to delete all the files in the subfolders and copy the files from Master to the subs. But I got stuck.

Maybe there even is a better approach. 

Any help is appreciated. Thank you

Michael

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP how far have you got with your Flow so far? If you use the Create File action and it has the same name as a file which exists, it will simply overwrite the existing file giving you a new version.

If you can post what you already have then I can help to guide you to what you want to do 🙂

Matt

[MichaelGSP]

Hi @MattWeston365, thank you for the response!

It isn't really a lot I can show to you. I somehow miss the logic behind the flows. The screenshot shows my latest try (I already deleted the other ones).

(Datei erstellen = Create File; Inhalt = Content)

I tried different options:

1. Trigger via Time every week

2. Trigger via manual Button

3. and now this one: Trigger via created file (though this misses when a file is changed)

1. would be prefered. But with none of those solutions I could handle it, to get rid of deleted files. Plus, I didn't know, that existing files will just be overwritten. Thanks for that informartion!

And as I said, my try to "delete and copy" may not be the best. If there is a way to mirror the Master folder, or something completle else, would be great as well.

At the end I need:

1. at least once a week, everything that is in Master to be the same in the subfolders

2. and in the subfolders that are still to come. (I did not ask for this first, because I cannot image how this could work, but maybe there is a way to even include future subfolders, without changing the flow everytime; i.e. I could name all the subfolders the same xxx/FolderA/subfolder ; xxx/FolderB/subfolder etc. and search for "subfolder" to apply the flow to any folder with this name; not knowing if this is a silly thought)

Again, I am really happy if #1 works; #2 would just be a great add on!

Thanks for any help!

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP give this Flow a go...

Step 1 - Get the data I need

• TRIGGER - RECURRENCE: Start with a recurrence trigger so that you can define when your Flow is going to run. This can be configured to run on a per second, minute, day etc basis, so configure this as you see fit. In my example I've configured it to run each day at 0100. Always check the Advanced Options for this trigger as that will give you more control over some of the scheduling.
• ACTION - ONEDRIVE Get Files: Get the files from my master folder so that I have got the list for later in my Flow.
• ACTION - ONEDRIVE Get Files: This time I'm going to get the contents of the folder which contains my master and subfolders. Folders are also returned using this action, and I can do a simple condition later to ensure I'm working with the right objects. 

Step 2 - Iterate through the folders in the parent

In this step I'm going to loop through all of the items that were found within the parent folder, and decide which ones I'm going to copy my content to. This is so I can add additional folders if I want to and I won't have to change my Flow (requirement 2 🙂)

• CONTROL - APPLY TO EACH: For each item that was found in the "List files in PARENT folder" action, I want to loop through to process them.
• CONTROL - CONDITION: As we loop through I want to check that the object returned is a Folder. For this I'm going to check if "Is Folder?" is true. I'm also going to ensure that I'm not going to copy into my MASTER folder by adding a second condition to ignore anything where the display name does not contain "master".

Step 3 - Iterate through the contents of MASTER

If the condition from Step 2 is true then I'm going to iterate through and copy each item into the destination folder.

• CONTROL - APPLY TO EACH: For each item which was found in the "List files in MASTER folder" action (right back at the start)
• ACTION - ONE DRIVE Copy File (preview): For each file that we have found in Master, we're going to copy it our sub folder.
  • File: The ID of the file from "List files in MASTER folder"
  • Destination File Path: The PATH from "List files in PARENT folder", then add a forward slash to indicate the directory change, then the NAME from "List files in MASTER folder"
  • Overwrite - Yes

The one additional config item that I've used for both loops is to turn on concurrency so that I can try to parallel process as much as possible. I've clicked on the ellipsis (...) on the loop and selected Settings. Concurrency control is off by default, so I've enabled it for both and left it at the default of 20.

Try that, if you have any issues please shout and I'll be happy to assist you further.

[v-yamao-msft]

Hi @MichaelGSP ,

Do you want to copy files from master folder to subfolders?

Do these subfolders contain the same files? I mean all the files from the master folder will be just copied to different subfolders without any differences?

Please share more details on your scenario.

Best regards,

Mabel

[MichaelGSP]

---

@v-yamao-msft wrote:

Do you want to copy files from master folder to subfolders?

Do these subfolders contain the same files? I mean all the files from the master folder will be just copied to different subfolders without any differences?

---

Yes and Yes!

Goal: Every subfolder contains exact the same as master. Even if I delete something in Master, I want it deleted in the subfolders

Structure right:

.../folder/MASTER

.../folder/folderX/folderA/SUBFOLDER

.../folder/folderX/folderB/SUBFOLDER

.../folder/folderX/folderC/SUBFOLDER

..........

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP I thought I'd replied to this last night, but for some reason my post isn't here. Ah well, I'll post again 🙂

Everything you want is possible, and here's how.

I've started with a recurrence trigger so that I can define when my Flow runs, e.g. it may run at 0100 each day. Feel free to change this to whatever schedule you want.

The next two actions are both "List files in folder" actions. The first one is going to get all of the files from my master folder, and will be used later on.

The second is going to get all files from the parent folder. The reason I'm doing this, is because Folders are returned with this action so I can loop through my folders and copy into each one I find. This will satisfy your requirement that if you add additional folders, this will still work without having to re-engineer your Flow.

Once I have got my list of items in the parent folder, I'm going to iterate through and check to see if it's something I need to work with. For this, I'm going to use the "is folder" property to ensure that I'm only working with folders. The second is the name, so I'm filtering out any folders which have "Master" in the name.

If it's a folder, and it's one of the subfolders that I want to copy into, then I can start the process of copying. Again I'm going to use a loop, this time looping through the list of files which I got from "List files in MASTER folder".

The destination path attribute in the copy action uses the "Path" dynamic content from "List files in parent folder", and Name from "list files in Master folder".

So by doing this, you'll be able to copy all of the content from your master folder into any number of subfolders.

The only other configuratin I've done, is on the loops I've enabled concurrency so that I can have multiple threads running at the same time. I've done this on both loops as I can process multiple folders at the same time, and multiple files at the same time.

I hope that helps, please shout if you need anything else 🙂

Matt

[MichaelGSP]

@MattWeston365 

Thank you so much! It works perfectly with the subfolder put directly in the folder I pull the list from.

1. But, once there is another folder "in between" the conditions says "fales" and its not working.

What am I missing?

!!Instead of exluding "Master" I included "Subfolder"!!

!!Instead of pull the list from roor I pulled from the parent folder that is on the same level as Master put has serval subfolders in it!!

- The rest is, even though its in German, what you explained

This is the folder structure:

2. And one more thing: It adds the master files to the subfolders, but if I delete something in the Master it stays in the subfolder.

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP 

I've changed my folder structure to try to mimic yours, so it now looks like this:

I've made the change to my "List files in PARENT folder" action, by changing the parent folder to be Testsubfolder

This will then copy the files from MASTER to Subfolder1 - 3 in my Testsubfolder directory.

I've added an additional step in to remove all files from these folders before the news ones are copied in, that will ensure you won't have any left behind from the previous run. It will use the "List files in subfolder" action with the folder being set to ID from "List files in PARENT folder".

I will then use the Delete file action for each file returned using the ID as the identifier.

[MichaelGSP]

1. Thanks again @MattWeston365  the delelte function works great! (when I say it works, I tested it in a flat structrue, not with the structrue mentioned below)

2. I am sorry if I was not clear enough with the folder structure and folder names. I hope this screenshot explains it better

The master data should be copied to the green marked Subfolders. So the "Subfolders" are not in one place, but under different folders.

With "List data/folder Parent" I only get the first child level scanned, but I'd need to access the folders one level deeper.

Is there a solution for that?

Hope this makes sense!!!

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP , are the subfolders named in green always the same name?

[MichaelGSP]

---

@MattWeston365 wrote:

Hi @MichaelGSP , are the subfolders named in green always the same name?

---

Not right now, but I can do that if it helps. Though if not necessary, that'd be great.

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP naming your subfolders in the same way will get you to your goal much quicker, you just need to include the name of the subfolder in the copy file action.

Your Destination file path will be <path>/subfolder/<name>

To be honest if you want to keep going down the levels you could keep nesting loops for each level of subfolder, but now things are starting to get a little bit messy. I'm just going to test an alternative method for you which give you a much cleaner Flow, and you can then make a choice between the options.

[MichaelGSP]

Thank you so much so far!!! This was alread a great help @MattWeston365 

But now I figured out, with "List files" you only get a max of 20 files -.-

We have 100 and growing. Is there a way to get more files included?

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP the pagination on the List Files in Folder OneDrive action defaults to 20, and for some reason seems to ignore me if I tell it to increase the pagination.

I'm sure I'll get told off for this 🙂 but I've changed my approach to use the SharePoint actions instead (OneDrive is a SharePoint site after all). I'm just running through the test at the moment and it seems to be working. I'll post the solution as soon as I'm on the train on my way home.

If you have found this post useful, please give it a thumbs up. If it has answered your question, please accept it as the solution so others can benefit.

@MattWeston365

[MattWeston365]

Hi @MichaelGSP this has worked:

Change 1: Replace the List Files in Folder action for the MASTER folder with the SharePoint action: List Folder

Configure the Site to the be the URL to your OneDrive site and select your Master folder in the identifier:

Change 2: Replace the OneDrive copy files with the SharePoint copy file action. Configure the Current Site address and Destination site address to use your OneDrive url. THe file to Copy is the ID which is returned from the SharePoint List Folder action.

The only real complexity comes with the Destination Folder as we need to determine that from the List Files in Parent folder by using an expression:

split(items('Apply_to_each_item_in_PARENT_folder')?['Path'],':')[1]

Effectively I'm going to split the folder path which is returned from OneDrive as it contains additional information about the OneDrive site beyond the basic URL. Luckily the string is split by a colon : so I can cut the string in half and just take the second half of it to use.

[MichaelGSP]

Thank you @MattWeston365 !

I am sorry for the late reply. I probably can't implement it before next week. But I surley let you know once I did!

[MichaelGSP]

@MattWeston365  after it took me way longer (as you see) than expecte, to come back to this problem, I tried to implement your latest support. But somehow I am not able to make it work proberly. 

So I decieded to use everything you helped me with so far and have every subfolder created seperately in the flow. Which is more hands on, but at least, it does, what it should do.

(only it shows me an error everyday: Flow not completed; but it is, so I leave it for now).

Once I can come back to this project, I'll give your latest post a try and let you know, once I made it work on my site.

Thank you so much for all the help in this!!!

[MattWeston365]

No problems @MichaelGSP let me know when you want to revisit it. I sometimes find it easier to hold a Teams meeting so that we can screenshare and can then collaboratively work out the resolution. The option is there when you want it