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Iterating over the lines of a text file and using StartsWith()

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Posted on by ThomTT

I read in a text file and iterate over it line by line using a for-each loop. Inside the loop I have an "if statement" that needs to test if the current line of text starts with a specific string (see screenshot).

I thought that using:

=StartsWith(CurrentItem, "<slide")

was the correct way to write the "if condition" but that results in the error:

Invalid argument type (Record). Expecting a Text value instead.

What is the correct way to refer to the text in CurrentItem within the StartsWith() function? TIA!

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Power Automate Desktop

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sergiopereira83 25 on at

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You need split the text with new line delimiter before iteration.

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Deenuji_Loganathan_ 6,255 Moderator on at

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@ThomTT

It appears that you've developed your flow using Power FX, which is currently in the preview stage and lacks comprehensive documentation from Microsoft. Therefore, I kindly request you to consider creating the flow by disabling Power FX, as shown in the screenshot below.

After disabling power fx and recreate flow like below:

Full flow screenshot:
Code:
File.ReadTextFromFile.ReadTextAsList File: $'''C:\\Deenu\\slide.txt''' Encoding: File.TextFileEncoding.UTF8 Contents=> FileContents LOOP FOREACH CurrentItem IN FileContents IF StartsWith(CurrentItem, $'''<slide''', True) THEN Display.ShowMessageDialog.ShowMessage Title: $'''sd''' Message: $'''slide exists''' Icon: Display.Icon.None Buttons: Display.Buttons.OK DefaultButton: Display.DefaultButton.Button1 IsTopMost: False ButtonPressed=> ButtonPressed END END

Thanks,
Deenuji Loganathan 👩‍💻
Automation Evangelist 🤖
Follow me on LinkedIn 👥

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ThomTT 9 on at

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The "read from text file" connector can be configured to returns a list where each element is a line of text. There is no need to manually split the text.

But even if I do manually split the text, the "if" statement still has the same issue.

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ThomTT 9 on at

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Thank you Deenuji - that was my problem. I recreated my flow without selecting Power FX and everything works as you explained.

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