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Recent Problems with Delete a Row (Excel Bussiness)

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Posted on by RC-24041525-0

I have several flows that delete Excel rows so that the tables can be cleared and new data can be inserted. They have always worked well. However, in the last few days they have been presenting problems. The problem is a 404 error where it says that the ID of the row I want to delete does not exist, but I notice that it deletes the row that has the content. It is as if it deletes and tries to delete the content again. I remember that this action is in a Loop of applying each, correctly. What changed for this to stop working correctly? How can I solve it?

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rzaneti 4,249 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @RC-24041525-0,

The update/delete operations in the Excel connector can face some issues when you have many of these tasks running at the same time and at the same file. This may be the case for you, since you have this operation running in an Apply to each loop. Also, as you're getting a 404 error, it looks like Power Automate is retrying to delete a records that was already successfully removed.

To solve it, I would recommend you to either disable the parallelism from you loop (if you ever enabled it) or to add some delay action to your loop, so there will be some seconds between each delete operation.

Another possibility (not recommended) is to disable the retry policy from you Delete row action:

Let me know if it works for you or if you need any additional help!

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RC-24041525-0 37 on at

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@rzaneti

In my flow there is no parallelism in the Delete a row action. I had already tried to add a delay before the action, in order to not have a repetition problem in the action but the same error occurred.

I

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,433 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @RC-24041525-0

I am guessing @rzaneti means concurrency not parallelism, aka go into settings and turn it on, but set it to 1, so only 1 can run at a time, otherwise you will get multi-threaded deletes happening at the same time.

I also always recommend that you delete rows in reverse, starting at the latest working your way backwards.

You said it works before, and while I do not doubt you there are many things that can make something different, without it being "different".

Another 2 things

1. I would add a Try / Catch error handling scope around all deletes, this way you can validate for sure if something did, BUT, it might once but probably not more than 1 time.

2. Looking at your flow Run, do you see any consistency, where its always row 167 that somehow has an issue.

The reason that I say go from back to front is, that way lines do not get re-saved as a different id that you haven't gotten to yet.

So going from

764

763

762, you never have to worry about deleting 762 and 763 becomes 762 etc.

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RC-24041525-0 37 on at

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I tried setting no repetitions and set the apply each loop to only one parallelism but the same error keeps persisting

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RC-24041525-0 37 on at

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Hi @Michael E. Gernaey

I set up the apply-to-each loop so that the actions would only have one parallel action. It didn't work. The error occurs both with tables with a lot of data and with little data. In the last attempt, there were only 16 rows and it was still a problem.

I will explain in more detail how my flow is working:

1. I read the Excel table in search of all rows, using a filter on a specific column, to track which data will be deleted.

2. I delete the rows according to what was found when reading the table. The key column for deletion is an ID generated by the GUID function in the data input process.

3. With the spreadsheet clean, I insert the new data, based on a Sharepoint list, but the ID column is fed exclusively by IDs generated by the GUID

I have not changed anything at all, neither in the table nor in the flow, since the last successful execution of the flow, a week ago.

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RC-24041525-0 37 on at

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Guys, I'm really stuck on this issue. I tried to create a variable to try to achieve greater stability but the problem persists. I don't know what to do anymore.

I really think that MS updated something and this connector has some bug that repeats the actions, but I don't know how to prove it.

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rzaneti 4,249 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @RC-24041525-0,

By any chance, do you have other users working on this Excel file while the automation runs? If yes, this could be a potential cause for the issue:

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/excelonlinebusiness/#general-known-issues-and-limitations

For testing purposes, I recommend you to try to replicate the same logic in a different flow and tied to a different table. If the problem persists, I would ask you to share the inputs for the List rows present in a table and Delete row actions, and a sample of your Excel table data (make sure to remove any sensitive data before sharing it)

Also, just brainstorming here: if you cannot find a solution at all with your current flow design, maybe you can consider use a Graph API request or an Office Script to perform this operation. I'm more familiar with the Office Scripts approach and it looks like you could implement this delete task with a pretty straightforward script. The downsides of this approach are the complexity (Office Scripts are written in Typescript programming language) and that some organizations have policies to prevent its usage.

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RC-24041525-0 37 on at

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@rzaneti

Is this table shared with many people? The answer is yes. However, this flow is triggered automatically at a time when I know there is no user or other automation working on this Excel file.
Thank you for your constant help. I will try to reproduce the same flow in another table and also reproduce another flow in this table.
I would not like to use an Office Script because I have the limitations of the company and because I do not fully understand how to use these scripts.
I persist that it seems strange to me because I have very similar flows in other tables, also shared, and they are working correctly.
Anyway, I will bring you information soon.

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RC-24041525-0 37 on at

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@rzaneti and @Michael E. Gernaey

Something seems really weird about this action. My other flows started showing the same problem, however the message in them changed - Graph API request failed. Error code is 'InvalidArgument'. Error message is 'The argument is invalid, missing or has an incorrect format.'.

Isn't it possible that there is some error processing this action?

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rzaneti 4,249 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @RC-24041525-0,

Based on this new error message, it looks like you are providing some invalid inputs to the Excel action - different from the original problem, where you had a "not found error" due to a repeated attempt from Power Automate to delete a record that was already successfully deleted before.

By the way, just for testing, could you please try to create a copy of your original flow and see if the same "not found" issue happens in this second version?

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