Skip to main content

Notifications

Community site session details

Community site session details

Session Id : 7infOEfT4AB6ZOZMW7Whpe
Power Automate - Power Automate Desktop
Unanswered

Writing to Excel as plain text ?

Like (0) ShareShare
ReportReport
Posted on 19 Nov 2021 21:04:22 by

Hi All,

 

A little help on writing data to Excel formatted as plain text please, whats the syntax after

%DataFomWebPage%

 

Thanks, Mike.

 

 

Screenshot 2021-11-19 210028.png

  • UK_Mike Profile Picture
    on 22 Nov 2021 at 20:17:07
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    Hi Guys,

     

    Clipboard text looked good but when written in Excel it all went into a single cell (A1).

    Wrote to text file, opened it with Excel, all got written to Column A rather than 6 different colums.

    Seperately, In a blank Excel when I open the text file as text/csv, it opens it in Power Query then I can save it as a table , which I do eventually anyway.

    Ive 2 working options, leave the desktop recorder prep the Excel file then write to this OR save the web tables as text files, Power Query to pull it altogether.

     

    Many thanks to all, much appreciated.

     

    Mike

     

     

  • MichaelAnnis Profile Picture
    5,721 Super User 2025 Season 1 on 22 Nov 2021 at 16:43:13
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    I liked VJRs solution of setting it to the clipboard text, but if that didn't work, then I would write it to a text file, and then open Excel and open the text file in Excel.

  • UK_Mike Profile Picture
    on 20 Nov 2021 at 11:20:32
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    Hi Guys,

     

    Many thanks for all the conflicting solutions, just kidding 😂

    Its a football ( soccer to my US friends ) results website.

    Its a daily flow that gets todays Date minus 1, adds the resulted Date to the end of the URL, see below.

    https://www.nowgoal4.com/football/fixture/?type=&f=ft1&date=2021-11-19

     

    I extract only 6 of the columns from the table.

    In Uipath this works flawlessly, writes into Excel as plain text and lets Power query do its magic, God I love Power Query !!!

    Initially I never got round to figuring out how to write as plain text in PAD, so I just used the desktop recorder

    to "select all cells, format as text, write to", been working great for months

    So hence looking for a more robust solution.

     

    Thanks guys 😊

     

  • VJR Profile Picture
    7,635 on 20 Nov 2021 at 09:11:13
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    Nope, not referring to number formatting, but formatting like font bold, color, borders, etc loose out when copied to clipboard.

    Same works when pasted in notepad.

     

    VJR_0-1637399408430.png

     

    Will wait to hear back from @UK_Mike what type of formatting is the source data in that would like to be removed.

  • Highboy Profile Picture
    1,161 Super User 2024 Season 1 on 20 Nov 2021 at 08:12:28
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    That will not change the actual format of a cell in Excel.
    Try it with 012345, and you will loose the 0 

  • VJR Profile Picture
    7,635 on 20 Nov 2021 at 02:31:59
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    Hi @UK_Mike 

     

    You can try setting the text into Clipboard and then from Clipboard to Excel.

    This could clear the formatting.

    In-built actions are available in PAD for Clipboard activities.

     

     

  • Highboy Profile Picture
    1,161 Super User 2024 Season 1 on 20 Nov 2021 at 01:04:06
    Re: Writing to Excel as plain text ?

    I don't know if that's possible, but if not you can do it by powershell.
    This example sets column A to text (Just open the excel document through PAD)
    Replace 'a' with a variable to make it more flexible.

    Highboy_0-1637366323548.png
    To change a single cell use the example below
    Change the Cells(2,1) to something like Cells(%row%,%column%) 

    Highboy_1-1637370088099.png

     

     

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

Quick Links

Understanding Microsoft Agents - Introductory Session

Confused about how agents work across the Microsoft ecosystem? Register today!

Warren Belz – Community Spotlight

We are honored to recognize Warren Belz as our May 2025 Community…

Congratulations to the April Top 10 Community Stars!

Thanks for all your good work in the Community!

Leaderboard

#1
WarrenBelz Profile Picture

WarrenBelz 146,745 Most Valuable Professional

#2
RandyHayes Profile Picture

RandyHayes 76,287 Super User 2024 Season 1

#3
Pstork1 Profile Picture

Pstork1 66,091 Most Valuable Professional

Leaderboard