Check if file exist on SharePoint from Power Automate

[hfdigital]

Hi there, I've developed my first PowerApps and Power Automate app that creates a PDF document in SharePoint from a PowerApp input form.  However on testing, I get an error message that the file already exists, which I expected.   On trying to resolve this, I'm running into issues.

I have checked existing posts and watched YouTube videos on how to check to see if a file name already exist and if it does, alert the user but can't find anything that achieves this.  I think I will need to do this before the create file 2 action but not sure what action/component to use.  Thanks

[BCLS776]

You'll want to include a Condition block in your flow to handle at least two cases: finding a file with the name or not. It's the flow equivalent of an If-Then statement. If you want PowerApps to return a message to the app user, you will need to structure it to respond in a way you can use in your app.

[hfdigital]

Thanks.

Do you have an example?  I understand what it is I need but not sure  how/where to structure it. The create file action/component creates a file with an hexadecimal string as seen below:

so, I think the conditional action will need to come before this.

Can you elaborate on the point you made concerning the return message.

[BCLS776 · Accepted solution]

It works better if you have your flow set up before you try to link it into your Power App. I agree, test for the filename before you attempt to create a file with the same name or the flow fails. Here's a screenshot with the basic flow functionality:

Three main steps:

1. List the files/folders in your target SP folder
2. Loop through each one and test whether its filename matches the one you want to use. This condition gets expressed in the area I circled in green, and I am assuming you have this filename available to the flow through dynamic content
3. Use the Condition block to determine what you want to do if the condition results in a Yes or a No. If you like, you can set up the condition so that only a Yes does something (circled in yellow) and then you can leave the No side (circled in blue) blank.

You can have the flow send some sort of response back to the app using the "Respond to Power App or Flow" block. By doing this, your MyFlow.Run() statement will return a value you can use in a variable, label Text property, or some other purpose. 

However, I use an easy way to avoid all of this - try attaching a timestamp or random number to your filenames. In this way, you can allow your app to perform the same operation and each file resulting from it will have a different filename. It generates extra files, but it's unlikely to fail the flow due to a duplicated filename.

[hfdigital]

Thanks.  I will give this a try.