Delete all rows in an Excel file

[ezequiel]

Hi,

I'm trying to find a way to include in Flow a step to delete all rows from a table in Excel. I couldn't anything. Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks,

Ezequiel

[abm · Accepted solution]

Hi @ezequiel 

Please follow the below steps:

Above I am using column Name (Column) as the key value.

[cyberco01]

@abm @ezequiel ,

how to handle if i have no key field. it is just values without a key field.

[abm]

Hi @cyberco01 

You need a column header which is a key value in Excel. In Power Automate you need an Excel table which will have a column header. Without table and columns  you can't process the excel sheet in Power Automate.

Thanks

[cyberco01]

@abm  I have column headers but there is no column that has unique value. As in there is no primary key column in my excel table values. Is that ok?

[abm]

Hi @cyberco01 

If you don't have a unique value to filter against then you end up having multiple rows to deal with. If you expecting more than one results thats fine.

Thanks

[cyberco01]

@abm @ezequiel ,

I have tried the flow as above. But, the flow is deleting only 256 rows of the 3k rows i have. Any reason why?

In actual, i have to delete 1980 rows and add in the same number of rows or more.

But, with the below flow, only 256 rows are removed and rest 1980 are added on.

Kindly help as i am with this since many days.

[cyberco01]

Please help dears.

[abm]

Hi

Increase the threshold by opening the list rows step and click the three dots on the right hand side, then click settings. Switch on the threshold and increase the limit.

Thanks 

[abm]

Hi

Please have a look at this link

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Unable-to-create-7000-items-in-a-sharepoint-list-...

Thanks 

[mahmud9935]

Bravo!

[Falhuddin]

I have same steps as @abm, List Row in Table (Filtered) & Apply to Each (Delete Row).

But it's use too much of API (Request Limit), because I need to delete estimated 1700 row each day.

It's consume 24% API usage from my total API just to delete a Row.

Is there any technic other than this to delete a multiple row?

[Ronak83garg]

Hi Falhuddin,

I had the similar use case where i need to delete 4-5k rows daily.

I have used office script to delete the data within the table.

It works as expected and does not consume much of time.

[Falhuddin]

Hi Ronak83garg,

Did you just delete entire table data or filter it first and delete all visible/filtered row?

can you share your script code?

Thank You.

[Ronak83garg]

Hi @Falhuddin ,

I have deleted entire table data in my use case. Please find below office script used to make it work :- 

  let table1 = workbook.getTable("MyTableName");

  //Using RowCount for logging purpose only

  let rowCount = MyTableName.getRangeBetweenHeaderAndTotal().getRowCount();

  console.log(rowCount)

  //Deleting whole table

  table1.delete();

But I believe we can also apply filters and delete the required data by iterating in loop from office script.

Thanks 🙂

[Falhuddin]

Hi @Ronak83garg ,

Thank you for sharing your code.

Yes, i already manage to delete filtered row but the last row is in fix position.

I'm still searching answer to make it last row in table is flexible.

The highlighted box is fix row where i can delete the filtered row, if the item that you filter is in after row "1126", then it will not be deleted.

[Ronak83garg]

Hi @Falhuddin, 

If that is the case, you can read the row count from the table and then instead of hardcoding 1126, just pass that variable so that it will be dynamic in nature.

Please refer below snapshot for your reference :-

Please correct me if I have misunderstood your problem statement.

Thanks 🙂

[Sheeloo]

If you are using Office Script then easier and faster option is to resize the table just to headers and clear data from row 2 onwards.

[Nikolaos]

Hi there,

In my case i needed to delete thousands of records and the apply to each -> "delete row" method was taking forever.

I am posting this solution for anyone who needs to delete all table rows at once.

You can add a simple script in your excel file and delete all rows immediately.

Assuming your table is named "mytable" use this script

and then use the power automate "Run script" action to run it.

Hope it helps

[ACPriebe]

Vote for Delete rows actions of Excel Online · Community (powerautomate.com)