Is there really no way to create a flow with OneDrive using folders?

[DakotaNZ]

I see this has been asked years back but I thought I better check in case it has since changed and I'm just missing something.  Here's what I am trying to do if anyone has a solution.  I really don't want to have to pay for Google Drive or Zapier when I'm already paying for OneDrive and Power Automate, so I'm hoping PA can do it.

When a client pays an invoice via my CRM Zapier creates a new folder in OneDrive, which is great!  However, I would then like Power Automate to find that new folder and create several subfolders within it like below.

It looks to me as though there is no option for folders which seems crazy to me.  If I am missing something and this is possible, I would really appreciate some step-by-step instructions on how to do this. Thanks 😊

[VictorIvanidze]

Have a look at this: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Copy-new-subfolder-from-OneDrive-to-Sharepoint/m-...

[grantjenkins]

How does CRM Zapier create the folder?

Are you looking for a trigger in Power Automate to detect when a new folder is created at which time you would want to create sub folders beneath it, or does Power Automate create the initial Client folder and you want to then get that folder you created and add sub folders? Sorry, just trying to understand the logic, but definitely sounds doable with Power Automate.

You can even have a template folder structure with subfolders/files that you could copy to your new folder if you wanted. This is a good approach if you have a set/base folder structure (optionally including files) that would be added to each Client folder on creation.

[DakotaNZ]

So my CRM (Dubsado) has a trigger with Zapier.  So as soon as a client pays their deposit it automatically creates a new folder with the client's name within my business folder that already exists in OneDrive.  So that part is all good.  What I need Power Automate to do is recognise when a new folder is created inside my business folder (so the one coming from Zapeir).  When that new folder is created I want it to then create a series of subfolders within that new folder.  A template folder structure sounds good as yes, there would always be the same file structure.

[grantjenkins · Accepted solution]

Ok - should have what you're after. One important thing to note is that OneDrive is effectively a SharePoint site behind the scenes, so you can use either the OneDrive connectors or the SharePoint connectors. In my solution I've used SharePoint connectors since the OneDrive connectors don't have what we need.

IMPORTANT: We will need to manually paste in our OneDrive URL for the Site Address since we are using SharePoint connectors. We will also need to type in Documents for the Library Name which is our OneDrive My files library.

For this example, I've got my base folders/files setup in OneDrive as shown below. We will copy all of these folders/files (including sub folders/files) into our new Client folder.

My client folders will be created in the following Clients folder.

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

When a file is created (properties only) will trigger when either a file or folder has been created. The OneDrive equivalent only works for files (not folders). I've set this trigger to only run if an item is created in the Clients folder. Also note that I've manually pasted in our OneDrive URL for the Site Address, and manually typed Documents for the Library Name which is the name of your My files library in OneDrive.

I've also set a couple of Trigger conditions here so that the flow will only run if the item created is a folder (not file) and it's created at the top level of our Clients folder so that it won't trigger again when we add our sub folders. The trigger conditions are below:

//Only trigger if the item created is a folder (not file)
@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body']?['{IsFolder}'], true)

//Only trigger if the item was created at the top level of our Clients folder
@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/{Path}'], 'Documents/Clients/')

To add our Trigger conditions, on the trigger click on the three dots ... then click on Settings and Add under Trigger Conditions.

Now that we've got our Trigger out of the way we can start to add our actions.

Get files (properties only) will retrieve a list of files and folders within our Base files folder. We also need to make sure it only returns the top-level files and folders here (not the sub folders/files) by setting Include Nested Items to No. As before we need to paste in our OneDrive URL and Documents.

Next, we loop through each of the files and folders that we retrieved from Get files so that we can copy them into our new Client folder. We use values from our Get files action as the input into our Apply to each.

The next thing we need to do is check if the current item were looking at is a folder or a file as the actions are different depending on what it is: Copy folder and Copy file. In our Condition we check to see if IsFolder (from Get files) is equal to true. If it is then we use Copy folder, and if false we use Copy file. Note that we can't just type in true - we need to add true as an expression as shown below.

Copy folder and Copy file are setup exactly the same as each other. It's just the actions that are different.

IMPORTANT: Identifier comes from Get files and Full Path comes from When a file is created.

And that's it. If we add a Client folder called Alpha we would see the following as a result after our Power Automate completes.

Note that you will need to modify your folder locations in the actions and the second trigger condition to suit where you have your Client folder.

[DakotaNZ]

Oh wow!  Thank you so much for the detailed reply.  I really appreciate the effort, you're a legend! 🤩