Excel delete entire table issues

[dnlstffrd]

I'm trying to use Excel to sort DevOps items in a flow (and then email them to a list), and I'm getting 2 major issues when trying to delete the table to make it reusable: about half the time I get a "Resource not found" error, and about a 1/3 of the time I get an error about the row not being found. The rest of the time the flow succeeds.  I've tried adding delays in various places for like 10-20 seconds with no avail. Is there a way to ensure success in this, or another way to sort DevOps items by state? Here's the relevant part of the flow:

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

May I ask you why you need to delete the table? I can see the flow deleting only the rows. 

Thanks

[dnlstffrd]

@abm Apologies, I kind of misspoke. I want to clean out the table by deleting all of the rows, so I can reuse the same Excel sheet to sort in future flows (and it's also used in some other flows as well).

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

I can see from your screenshot there are other process before your delete action? Could you please explain? Generally for deleting the excel sheet passing the right id it should do the job as expected.

Thanks

[dnlstffrd]

@abm Happy to. Those are all just append variable functions operating on each of the excel rows to basically create and build out an HTML table to use in the email to add some nicer formatting, so they don't really have anything to do with the Excel part of this flow which is failing.

[abm]

ok thanks for your reply. Could you post your screenshot of your error?

Thanks

[dnlstffrd]

Here's the Resource Not Found one:

And the id not found (even though it's from the "List rows from table" above):

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

Could you check the following of Apply to Each settings?

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

Also check whether you have empty rows in your Excel Sheet?

Thanks

[dnlstffrd]

@abm During the run, I can see the rows fill up from the add rows that happens just before the list, so I can validate the rows are getting consistently put in the excel sheet. That part works 100% of the time.

I've tried both with concurrency control off and on, currently it's off:

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

What you are saying is there is a process before the list rows where rows are added and later this gets deleted? If thats the case please post a full screenshot of your flow. I was giving answer based on your screenshot. Looks like its missing some part of the process here.

[dnlstffrd]

@abm Here's the full flow:

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

I can see there is a step called add rows excel to sort. This could be the issue. So there might be a timing issue for the meta data to refresh the cache. I would spin up another flow to delete the excel sheet rows. So one for the add rows and sort and another for delete.

Thanks

[dnlstffrd]

@abm I actually tried that, I had a separate flow to just delete the rows just in case this one failed, and that one actually fails in exactly the same way. That flow looks like this:

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

Try turn on the concurrency control and set to 1. Run the flow and see if you getting any error.

[dnlstffrd]

@abm I did that, but it still seems to fail sadly.

Confirmation of the concurrency:

And the latest run results:

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

Thanks for your reply. Could you please expand the run history and check with Id its failing with? Check if any spaces in that ID or something? Try to do a Trim()?

[dnlstffrd]

@abm I can't find a recent run that has failed because a row can't be found because of an id, but it's just the id from DevOps that gets directly written in, so there's no spaces or anything. The majority of the runs seem to fail because of the "Resource not found" during deletion.

[abm]

Hi @dnlstffrd 

Next run when it fails check the id? Also add a debug compose action and set an expression to find the length of the id. This way we can determine whether it has any special characters or not? I am running out of options here. Without a screen share it will be difficult to analyse.

Thanks