Power Automate Fundamentals # 39: Update A row in an Excel Table Onedrive in Power Automate

[codevenkat]

Power Automate Fundamentals # 39: Update A row in an Excel Table Onedrive in Power Automate

Introduction:

One of the common scenario was to update data in Excel Spread sheets . To achieve this functionality automatically, we can use an action- Update a row into a Table in Power Automate under connector Excel Online (Business). As an example, after Sending emails to contacts, Employee details will be updated with sent Date time stamp in a separate column.

Step 1:

Login to the required Power Apps environment using URL make.powerapps.com by providing username and password and click on Flows on the left-hand side as shown in the below figure.

Step 2:

After Step 1, Click on New Flow and select instant cloud flow and provide the trigger as Manually trigger a flow and click on Create as shown in the below figure.

Step 3:

After Step 2, write logic to send email by reading spread sheet that is present in onedrive/Sharepoint and then open spread sheet which was present in One drive her in this example Employee sheet and add another column Date and save it as shown in the below figure.

Step 4:

After Step 3,go back to the existing flow Send Emails from Excel Sheet and take Apply to each action and under select an output from previous steps pick the value that is present in List rows present in a table as shown in the below figure.

Step 5:

After Step 4,click on Add an action , user can see Choose an operation and in that select Excel Online(Business) as shown in the below figure.

Step 6:

After Step 5,select under Excel Online(Business) select Update a row action and name it as Update Excel Row with Date when Email was sent to respective contact as shown in the below figure.

Step 7:

After Step 6, under Update Excel Row with Date when Email was sent to respective contact provide the following values

Location : OneDrive for Business

Document Library : OneDrive

File :ExcelWorkBooks/Employee.xlsx

Table : Table1

Key Column: Sno [This is the column which is present in Table1 in Spread sheet]

Key Value  : Sno [Select Dynamic value present in List rows present in a table]


Date : triggerOutputs()['headers']['x-ms-user-timestamp']

 as shown in the below figure.

Step 8:

After Step 7,save and test this flow you should see the excel sheet with Dates filled as current time stamp where emails were sent to contacts as shown in the below figure.

And then open spread sheet and observe dates gets populated as shown in the below figure

Note:

1. Make sure during Excel Online (Business) Connection establishment a popup window will be shown and if asked provide details and wait till that authentication popup window automatically gets closed.
2. In the spread sheet, make sure you add column Date and save sheet.
3. I have considered existing flow which I have used Send Email to and added extra steps to concentrate more on the core logic of this article.
4. Make sure Sno column in spread sheet is unique.
5. Refer to my previous articles for sending email from excel sheet logic .

Conclusion: In this way we can update a row into an Excel Table in power automate easily.

[lcosta]

Great article - thank you for your contribution!

One question: How do I update a cell to an empty value? The situation I am trying to cover is to delete the contents of a cell.

Thanks!

[codevenkat]

You can remove the values , but make sure not to touch Sno Id , you should be good.

[lcosta]

Codevenkat

I know I can delete all cells in a row (delete rowm node) row, but my point is to update a few cells, and delete the content of other cells in the same row. The Excel update row is great at updating. Leaving parameters empty won't make any change to the cell contents. So, how do I update an Excel cell - to remove its contents - with an update / or any other Excel function?

[codevenkat]

Update row in power automate should work, I dont think any special function required in excel sheet.

[Aswift2022_]

Good post this, can I update rows in tables that are in multiple workbooks? 

The tables are identical, and all the files are in the same folder. 

[codevenkat]

@Aswift2022_  : You have to carefully iterate each file and do necessary updates.

[BinuMathew]

Thank you for the update.

Is it possible to club both the actions together. E.g., For sending emails we use the for each row action. In the same block under that can we update the row also.

[codevenkat]

Hi @BinuMathew  : You can keep them in the same block, but you have to be careful as at times before sending email itself row can get update.

[SimoneDL]

Hi,

Is it possible to select all rows to be updated?

It asks for a Key Value, but I cannot find a way to tell the power automate to select every possible value in that column as a key value.