Moving/copying an attachment from one table to a different one

[Gary_Eden]

Hi,

Bit of an odd question but this has got me stumped.

I have two apps, the first is to create a list of pipeline proposals. If approved the proposal can move to the next stage of approval in the second app (the second app can also process new proposals without needing to go via the pipeline app).

In the second app users select the approved pipeline case to pre-populate the fields (pulling data from the pipeline table). These are built using individual input fields and then patched to an 'approvals' table. This works perfectly for text/numeric values. However, there doesn't appear to be a way to copy over the attachment from the pipeline table to the approvals table.

After wasting a lot of time trying to use Patch() to upload the attachment, and then finding out you can only upload attachments from within a form (why? 😠). I've tried various options from within a form.

I can show the saved attachment in the form (from the pipeline table). However, as the form needs to be linked to the approvals table (to save it on submit) I can't open the file nor save it. I'm assuming that once saved the form displays a link and as the link is to a different table clicking the link doesn't work. 

Is there any way to pull the attachment out of the first table, cache it, and then save it to the second table?

(At the moment users are having to reattach the file, not great user experience.)

Finally, to reiterate the point... why can't adding attachments be an input option so we can use patch()? 

[KvB1]

I have been unable to directly grab the content of the attachment from a sharepoint list without using automate, not sure if its possible. 

What I did in a similar situation is create a flow thats triggered by the same button as the patch function. The flow grabs the file content of the first record in one list, creates a file and adds that as an attachment to the second record in the second list.

[WarrenBelz · Accepted solution]

Hi @Gary_Eden ,

I won't get into the technicalities here, but attachments are actually stored in OneDrive with a link on the item to their location. They are in a folder reflecting the ID of the item concerned, so you cannot collect them or move them in Power Apps. You can however use Power Automate (Flow) to get the attachments (send the ID of the old item)  and Add Attachments (send the ID of the new item).

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[Gary_Eden]

I'm actually using Dataverse on this one but I expect the principles are the same.
I'm not a great fan of Automate/Flow... I've spent too many weeks figuring out why flows have suddenly broken only to find out that it's been due to a MS update and then having to rebuild them from scratch (and finding out some of the components are no longer available in the process).

From reading the blurb it also appears that attachments can only be saved to either SharePoint or Dataverse. Not a problem in this case but why can't you save to SQL? You can save images to SQL why not files?
 

[WarrenBelz]

@Gary_Eden ,

Sorry, I am not an SQL user, but the process in SharePoint actually saves the physical file in OneDrive in folders named after the list name and ID of the item, with a link in the list. All the "background" handling and presentation is taken care of by SharePoint and Power Apps.

[Warisme]

Thank you for letting me know that background on the, as this makes more sense now.

I am able to use different Forms (one for logging action, the other the main row in the main table.)

So I log attachments with meta data, but also the actual attachments, as in this case, there are Many

people using 1 record to add their attatchments to it.  as they do it becomes a large attachment list.

Works fast and great, the app side is fluid.  The Log of course only gets the attachments they uploaded

on that date/time, so we know who did what.  Having a copy of the attachment is also nice for later work.

The REMOVE feature of the product does not work the same.  Even though from seeing the form, you would think I could SUBMIT it and the attachments would save to the list, but they do not.  Every other part does,

but when I take the Attachments from the Main form, and load them into the Log Form from a collection.

I get NADA!  so whacky, I was assuming I would get a new set of the REMOVED files as attachment in my log.

but never saves them, even though they look perfect on the form.  If I add a file from the control in that same 

process (ie I make visible that log form for testing) it will save the 1 file I added using the control.

So in this case, say 2 were REMOVED, I put them into the log form attachments, they look fine, and add another file from the phone, then hit submit, even though the 2 from the Collection look just like the one I added using the control, only 1 will save to the list, and it was the one added from the control.  I was at a loss... 

I figured I was missing something.  Seems the control front end Gui can be tricked to display attachments, but on the submit, it must be missing the data or something. as it just does not save them!

This at least helps me understand how the control is working, and I can live without getting a copy of the DELETED attatchment, as I have a copy when it was added, but that uses the attatchments card where a row does not have an AbsolueURI (reference it directly vs the REMOVE which has to compare an intial collection to know the Delta,

and trying to save them from a collection just does not work... 

I will figure out a way to do it, as I don't ever give up, even if I have to just write my own custom control, but i hesitate mixing flows and powerapps, just had to many flow issues in the past, but I am pleasantly surprised at how much better the power platform has gotten.  I actually think Microsoft has finally woken up again!