Update & Create Excel Records 50-100x Faster
I was able to develop an Office Script to update rows and an Office Scripts to create rows from Power Automate array data. So instead of a flow creating a new action API call for each individual row update or creation, this flow can just send an array of new data and the Office Scripts will match up primary key values, update each row it finds, then create the rows it doesn't find.
And these Scripts do not require manually entering or changing any column names in the Script code.
• In testing for batches of 1000 updates or creates, it's doing ~2000 row updates or creates per minute, 50x faster than the standard Excel create row or update row actions at max 50 concurrency. And it accomplished all the creates or updates with less than 4 actions or only .4% of the standard 1000 action API calls.
• The Run Script code for processing data has 2 modes, the Mode 2 batch method that saves & updates a new instance of the table before posting batches of table ranges back to Excel & the Mode 1 row by row update calling on the Excel table.
The Mode 2 script batch processing method will activate for updates on tables less than 1 million cells. It does encounter more errors with larger tables because it is loading & working with the entire table in memory.
Shoutout to Sudhi Ramamurthy for this great batch processing addition to the template!
Code Write-Up: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/resources/samples/write-large-dataset
Video: https://youtu.be/BP9Kp0Ltj7U
The Mode 1 script row by row method will activate for Excel tables with more than 1 million cells. But it is still limited by batch file size so updates on larger tables will need to run with smaller cloud flow batch sizes of less than 1000 in a Do until loop.
The Mode 1 row by row method is also used when the ForceMode1Processing field is set to Yes.
Be aware that some characters in column names, like \ / - _ . : ; ( ) & $ may cause errors when processing the data. Also backslashes \ in the data, which are usually used to escape characters in strings, may cause errors when processing the JSON.
Version 7 Note
Diverting from what is shown in the video, I was able to remove almost all the flow actions in the "Match new and existing data key values then batch update" scope after replicating their functions in the scripts themselves. The flow now goes directly from the "SelectGenerateData" action to the "Run script Update Excel rows" action and the script handles matching up the UpdatedData JSON keys/field names to the destination table headers.
Also version 7 changes the primary key set up in the SelectGenerateData and changes the logic for skipping cell value updates & blanking out cell values.
Now the primary key column name from the destination table must be present in the SelectGenerateData action with the dynamic content for the values you want to match up to update. No more 'PrimaryKey' line, the update script will automatically reference the primary key column in the SelectGenerateData data based on the PrimaryKeyColumnName input on the update script action in the flow.
Now leaving a blank "" in the SelectGenerateData action will make that cell value in the Excel table empty, while leaving a null in the SelectGenerateData action will skip updating / not alter the cell value that currently exists in the Excel table there.
Version 6 which looks closer to the version shown in the video can still be accessed here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Cookbook/Excel-Batch-Create-Update-and-Upsert/m-p...
Version 7 Set-Up Instructions
Go to the bottom of this post & download the BatchExcel_1_0_0_xx.zip file. Go to the Power Apps home page (https://make.powerapps.com/). Select Solutions on the left-side menu, select Import solution, Browse your files & select the BatchExcel_1_0_0_xx.zip file you just downloaded. Then select Next & follow the menu prompts to apply or create the required connections for the solution flows.
Once imported, find the Batch Excel solution in the list of solution & click it to open the solution. Then click on the Excel Batch Upserts V7 item to open the flow. Once inside the flow, delete the PlaceholderValue Delete after import action.
Open the Office Script Batch Update compose action to the BatchUpdateV7 script code. Select everything inside the compose input & control + C copy it to the clipboard.
Then find & open an Excel file in Excel Online. Go to the Automate tab, click on All Scripts & then click on New Script.
When the new script opens, select everything in the script & control + V paste the BatchUpdateV7 script from the clipboard into the menu. Then rename the script BatchUpdateV7 & save it. That should make the BatchUpdateV7 reference-able in the later Run script flow action.
Do the same process to import the BatchCreateV7 script.
Then go to the List rows Sample source data action. If you are going to use an Excel table as the source of updated data, then you can fill in the Location, Document Library, File, & Table information on this action. If you are going to use a different source of updated data like SharePoint, SQL, Dataverse, an API call, etc, then delete the List rows Sample source data placeholder action & insert your new get data action for your other source of updated data.
Following that, go to the Excel batch update & create scope. Open the PrimaryKeyColumnName action, remove the placeholder values in the action input & input the column name of the unique primary key for your destination Excel table. For example, I use ID for the sample data.
Then go to the SelectGenerateData action.
If you replaced the List rows Sample source data action with a new get data action, then you will need to replace the values dynamic content from that sample action with the new values dynamic content of your new get data action (the dynamic content that outputs a JSON array of the updated data).
In either case, you will need to input the table header names from the destination Excel table on the left & the dynamic content for the updated values from the updated source action on the right. You MUST include the column header for the destination primary key column & the the primary key values from the updated source data here for the Update script to match up what rows in the destination table need which updates from the source data. All the other columns are optional / you only need to include them if you want to update their values.
After you have added all the columns & updated data you want to the SelectGenerateData action, then you can move to the Run script Update Excel rows action. Here add the Location, Document Library, File Name, Script, Table Name, Primary Key Column Name, ForceMode1Processing, & UpdatedData. You will likely need to select the right-side button to switch the UpdatedData input to a single array input before inserting the dynamic content for the SelectGenerateData action.
Then open the Condition If new records continue else skip action & open the Run script Create Excel rows action. In this run script action input the Location, Document Library, Script, Table Name, & CreateData. You again will likely need to select the right-side button to change the CreateData input to a single array input before inserting the dynamic content for the Filter array Get records not found in table output.
If you need just a batch update, then you can remove the Filter array Get records not found in table & Run script Create Excel rows actions.
If you need just a batch create, then you can replace the Run script Batch update rows action with the Run script Batch create rows action, delete the update script action, and remove the remaining Filter array Get records not found in table action. Then any updated source data sent to the SelectGenerateData action will just be created, it won't check for rows to update.
Thanks for any feedback,
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And reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kolota/) if you want to hire me to consult or build more custom Microsoft solutions for you.
Office Script Code
(Also included in a Compose action at the top of the template flow)
Batch Update Script Code: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kfzd2NX9nr9K8hBcxy60ipryAN4koStw/view?usp=sharing
Batch Create Script Code: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OeFdl7em8IkXsti45ZK9hqDGE420wE9/view?usp=sharing
(ExcelBatchUpsertV7 is the core piece, ExcelBatchUpsertV7b includes a Do until loop set-up if you plan on updating and/or creating more than 1000 rows on large tables.)
watch?v=HiEU34Ix5gA
Back on this filtering problem I experienced earlier.
Some context: I am filtering data from an SQL table to isolate the data I should copy into Dataverse tables by batches. I explained earlier that it was taking ages to do a simple filter using something like: "string(<Dataverse dump>) contains item(<SQL table>)" as a filtering criterion.
Since SQL server supports 100K records per page, I went with it initially when performing my Get Rows. This works fast, however when hitting the Filter option, it slowed everything down when I had lots of records to compare with.
Filtering the number of items from the left array used to compare helped, but this is not comparable to the gain I obtained by reducing the total number of records the Get Rows SQL action should deal with:
When Top Count variable is set to 100000 and you have pages that are fully loaded, this filter may take several hours, if not days, to execute properly.
Setting the Top Count variable to 50000 changed the whole game: each SQL page now takes about 8 minutes to get parsed and processed (read, filter, batch insert into Dataverse in batches of 1,000).
Last, as I was trying to troubleshoot the issue, I placed various traces in my flow which basically sent Teams messages into a DEBUG channel I created for this purpose. Since you cannot view what's happening into a loop before it completes, that's the only way I thought to provide some visibility about which step (or action) the engine was currently processing. And it turns out that when cancelling long-running flows, execution does not immediately stops. In my case, I kept on receiving messages for actions that followed the Filter action that took hours.
Hope that helps!
Fred
@Fred_S
You really solved the heck out of that problem. Thanks for sharing with others!
Hi,
Great video. I mapped out everything for the flow but i am keep getting the below error from the office script. I am new to office script 😕
thanks for your help in advance.
What is the name of your table in Excel & the name of the table you input in the script action?
1st make sure those match
And is your table empty?
Try adding a blank row to the table 1st if it is completely empty.
@takolota Thanks for responding so quick. I see what i was doing wrong. I did indeed had different table name for my destination table. I left out one character. But now the flow works but its only bring up one item from the range of source data. for example if the source data has 210 rows its grabbing the last item and inserting the same item 210 times in destination table.
Are you using the most recent V5.1?
If you are using the most recent version, then try changing the Mode1Processing input to Yes
Thank you, its working now. You are the best. 🙂
I also created a script to delete everything from the destination table and then insert new data from batch insert. Its working flawlessly
Here is a fix for the negative number issue - I'm sure I posted a message about this but I can't find it. You have to replace your "SelectArrayofArraysUpdate" map function with this code below:
I’d be pretty concerned that most “fixes” attempted to try to get that to also parse integers would also introduce other edge-cases & errors.
Again, Excel should accept string values for Number/Integers, Booleans, Dates, etc. and they will be the correct datatype if you have set the table column to that data type.
So I’d advise to simply make sure all the data going in are strings, rather than try to adjust the expression there.
Maybe there would be better options with additional functionality in Power Automate like Regex, but the ways I’ve seen to incorporate Regex require custom & premium connectors with extra set-up.
This fix just makes your existing code not break when the first character of the number is a minus sign.