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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate - Building Flows / extract info from pdf ...
Power Automate - Building Flows
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extract info from pdf (using AI builder) and update existing spreadsheet

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Posted on by pav123 2

Hi, 

Looking for guidance on building a flow that takes the output from AI builder pdf processing and updates an existing excel spreadsheet. 

 

I can use AI builder to extract pdf information and create new rows in excel. And I understand how to use 'list rows in excel' and arrays to update an excel table from a sharepoint list. But don't know how to do this compare and update excel functionality direct from pdf extraction using AI builder.

 

Any help/leads greatly appreciated,

 

Thanks

  • pav123 Profile Picture
    pav123 2 on at
    Re: extract info from pdf (using AI builder) and update existing spreadsheet

    Thanks for quick response @fchopo , much appreciated. Yes, the pdf documents have a unique ID that I'm now using with your advice.

     

    I've tried your suggestions and I had some success on first document but had a failure on next few. Failure shown below:

    {
      "status": 404,
      "message": "No row was found with Id '2089'.\r\nclientRequestId: 01ef3145-816b-45f2-bdad-7c793b66d1f2\r\nserviceRequestId: 86f498d4-ee11-45ad-b013-9f2ed3dfe5bc;69b3ce4b-4c3e-4cf2-96be-9008c0766691;d168deb6-ff24-45f3-aab1-963377ae13a4;d3ded118-2815-4c49-97b4-9374b57c852c;76faa66d-576c-4d6a-bfb6-0f7b87b0297f",
      "error": {
        "message": "No row was found with Id '2089'."
      },
      "source": "excelonline-ae.azconn-ae-001.p.azurewebsites.net"
    }
     
    If I'm starting with a blank excel table, I guess its not seeing a match of the unique ID then uncertain what to do?  Do I need a decision tree where it looks for an existing row with the ID, and if it's exactly the same do nothing; if it exists but needs some changes, then make the changes; if it doesn't exist already in the spreadsheet then add a new row.  (think I need something that works like this, just don't know how to achieve it...)
     
    Thanks in advance for any further tips on how to achieve this.
     
    Thanks!
     
    Was also thinking
  • fchopo Profile Picture
    fchopo 7,972 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at
    Re: extract info from pdf (using AI builder) and update existing spreadsheet

    Hi @pav123 

    First of all, in order to update an excel row, you need an identifier field. You would do the following:

    1) Extract information from AI Builder

    2) Use "Update a row" Excel action, where you need to populate Key Column name and Key Column value.

     

    Is the key value also extracted from the pdf document?

    Hope that helps!
    Ferran

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