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NTT_Dave
Frequent Visitor

Flow expression referencing formatted number fails - expression changed by itself?

Hi Folks,

 

very strange issue. My Flow has been running fine for a couple of weeks, and today I received the following error.

 

Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Send_contract_details_to_contract_administrator' inputs at line '1' and column '2930': 'The template language expression 'body('Format_-_Contractor_Rate')?['body']' cannot be evaluated because property 'body' cannot be selected. Property selection is not supported on values of type 'String'.

 

"Contractor Rate" is a sharepoint list number field. I use the "Format Number" action to format is as currency, and then reference it in the body of an email as below:

 

NTT_Dave_0-1592899894304.png

 

The issue I found is that sharepoint changed the expression:

outputs('Format_-_Contractor_Rate')?['body']

to 

body('Format_-_Contractor_Rate')?['body']

 

by deleting the reference to the format number action and re-adding it, the expression was restored. This could not have occurred by accident as I have two other similar currency references that failed in the same way.

 

I had searched a few forums/boards but had not seen this issue raise.  Has this happened to anyone else? Or just me? I am very,very new to Power Automate and therefore do not discount being a 'user' error, however the flow has been working just fine for weeks and then ceased working today, no changes had been made in weeks.

 

Thanks and regards,

 

David.

9 REPLIES 9
NTT_Dave
Frequent Visitor

A little more info. 

 

Every time I go back into my flow to edit it, the expression changes from outputs(....)?[] to body(....)?[] causing my flow to subsequently fail if I don't manually re-instate it each time I edit the flow. It occurs on every instance in the flow where I use a the output of a "Format Number" action to display a number either inside an email, or create a Word Document. And it occurs not just in this flow but other flows I've created as well, resulting in the same error. Surely this cannot be expected behaviour, and surely I'm not the only one with this issue if it is a bug? 


Can anyone give some advice on how I get the issue validated whether it's a bug, or a user issue please. I would really appreciate it.

 

Thanks.

 

Dave.

Hi Folks,

 

Just looking for some assistance on this issue. As long as I leave the Flow Editor open in my browser (Edge, or Chrome), I can edit the flow and save, etc. and the expression remains as outputs(); however, if I close the browser and go back to edit the flow, outputs() is change to body().

 

This is very frustrating as I need to go through my flow and update every expression that references the format number object back to outputs().

 

This is surely a bug, how do I get this registered as a bug please?

 

Thanks,


Dave.

Hiya @NTT_Dave  I am having the exact same issue 😞

 

VERY ANNOYING AS I HAVE 9 formatted number items that I need to use in my flow T_T, having to updated them all every time I edit the flow is not great...

@NTT_Dave sorry, I don't have a fix, but if you want a laugh I figured I would let you know this is STILL an issue. I'm experiencing it to this day.

 

Did you ever find any resolution other than editing every single spot where the formatted number is used every time you open the flow?

NTT_Dave
Frequent Visitor

Hi @notj , no... no resolution as yet, although I haven't touched that flow in a while now. Thanks for the update though. Kind regards, Dave.

ginawatkins
Frequent Visitor

I've also experienced this issue a couple of times in the last week. I tried replacing the 'body' with 'output' again but it just keeps changing back to: 

body('Format_number')?['body']

 Very frustrating as well. This is for an Approval Flow that's going to executives and a failing flow isn't a good look. 

notj
Post Prodigy
Post Prodigy

@ginawatkins unfortunately, I think Microsoft has given up on it. It took some time getting them to admit it was a bug, then they used to email me an update every Thursday to tell me it wasn't fixed yet. They've stopped emailing me after a while. 

ginawatkins
Frequent Visitor

@notj Thanks for the info! I suppose the best option is to not use the Formatted Number step and it will be less readable. I'll have to look into other ways to get the number formatted. 

 

Additionally, I tried a solution on the post linked below and the Flow still changes it back to body('Format_number')?['body']

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Send-mail-failing-with-format-numbers/td-p/517291

JamyJamal
Frequent Visitor

@NTT_Dave and @ginawatkins, Microsoft have actually fixed this, but in a different way, it is now an expression!

JamyJamal_1-1616431756887.png

 

JamyJamal_0-1616431543605.png

you just need to know the number formats which you can find here.
and there is more info about the expression here.

 

Hope that helps! 🙂

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