Excel and its operations

[cbgbala]

Hi All,

U just wanted to understand, how we can create new excel file in local/network folder and in sharepoint. And also I want to do all operations like adding of rows and columns, deleting of rows and columns, copying data etc.

Noye: don't want to use power automate desktop. Don't want to use any existing excel and don't want to use any tables in excel.

Regards,

Balakrishna

[poweractivate]

@cbgbala 

To create a new Excel file with a Power Automate Cloud Flow, you can have an Excel File with a single Table in it and the columns you want, use Get File Content to get the file's content, use the Excel actions like Add row, etc., and then and then use Create File to create a brand new file, you can use the Actions to create file in OneDrive or in SharePoint.

You can see example of this here in this post:

  Making an Excel File with Flow 

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@cbgbala wrote:

Don't want to use any existing excel and don't want to use any tables in excel.

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However, I am not sure if it is possible to do it without existing Excel with existing rows in a Cloud Flow.

You can try to see if a blank Excel file with one single Table and no rows at all may work as a "template" and you add the rows after that is the only thing I can think of. I am not 100% sure if it will work well without adding the rows in advance, depends on the scenario.

I do not think you can make the Excel File out of the box with nothing. It may only be possible with some intricate familiarity with the file format somehow, but even so, the Excel Actions may not be able to be used at all without a pre-existing file.

If using a blank Excel file with one single Table and no rows at all, as a "template" really "does work" to build off of it, then you can try and just experiment and find out what is the exact File Contents for an Excel File with one Table and no rows, take a note of it, hard-code it into the Flow as a Compose block, then in Power Automate Cloud Flow, use a create file action right away in OneDrive right away with that specific exact encoded file contents from Compose, use any unique random filename of your choice (even one generated by an expression), and then feed that resulting new file path into Power Automate Excel Actions - that is all I can think of to fulfill your requirement of "do not want to use existing Excel File". Note I have not tested this thoroughly in the specific way you might be implying, you can test it and see if it might work for you or even be possible.

 By the way, you cannot put any Formulas in the Excel File as of the moment to my knowledge., Cloud Flow will not recognize any Excel formulas inside the Flow. If you wanted to work with Excel Formulas from a Flow - this is not possible right now from a Cloud Flow.

How to use an excel function in flow 

Insert formula in cell in a excel "add a row" action in Flow 

See above post which indicate it is not possible. I also know myself that it is not possible to use Excel Formula from a Cloud Flow.

Also, I believe it is really impossible with out of the box Excel Actions if you do not want to use any Tables in the Excel file. It is required that there be at least one Excel Table with the data inside the Excel Table. If you do not want to use any Table, then you cannot use the out of the box Power Automate Excel Connector

If you prefer though consider to make a CSV file (.csv) - this is also readable by Excel.

If you are OK with making CSV file in this way, it is possible to make CSV without any starting file.

Since CSV is just essentially a text file formatted in specific way, this can be output from Power Automate

No Excel Actions needed - no Excel Tables (since CSV is just text) - no starting file necessary, etc.

Creating directly in a local computer is not possible by using the OneDrive related Actions by Cloud Flow. You can synchronize in OneDrive to the computer - but you cannot create in a personal computer's local folder from a Cloud Flow. 

To create a file on local or network machines by Cloud Flow directly and not by using Power Automate Desktop - yes, it is possible to do it from Cloud Flow, but you must instead use the File System related Actions and on-premises data gateway