Solution failed to export: Entity 'connectionreference' With Id = {GUID} Does Not Exist

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Posted on by TE-16052318-0

Greetings,

Premise: I cleaned up our teams solution in the DEV environment from 60 Connection References down to 16. It was tedious, but I went through every cloud flow we had (64 originally, got us down to 54 deleting unneeded ones) and reassigned all Actions that had Connection References that were superfluous (because they referenced the same Connections) so that we could standardize on the Connection References we were using.

However, no I can't export the solution anymore. After trying to export, I get a banner at the top stating:

Solution "{Solution Name} 1.0.0.0" failed to export: Entity 'connectionreference' With Id = de6cd02f-1cea-ef11-9342-000d3a369800 Does Not Exist

Since I have no way (that I've found) to be able to search for all Connection References in the environment (in general, but especially) by their GUID, and the error gives no other information, I'm at a loss as to how to fix this.

Importan caveat: I was able to export the solution up until I started the Connection Reference (and Cloud Flow) clean up, and no one else was working on the solution during that time, so it's definitely something I did or that happened during the clean up.

What I've tried:

. Searched the previously exported solution files (after unzipping it and then searching in all files) for any reference to the GUID that the error was referencing, couldn't find it referenced anywhere

. Inspecting the requests that were made to export the solution (didn't find anything except what was being displayed in the banner)

. Switching to the Classic View and trying multiple ways to find all of the Connection References in the environment (no dice, so I also couldn't search based on their GUID's, obviously)

. Going back through every Cloud Flow to make sure every Action that uses a Connection Reference had one that was present within the solution

. Searching in the XRM Toolbox - Metadata Browser (tool) using the Guid and a couple far fetched attempts to see if I could find it that way

. Removing cloud flows that were not originally a part of the solution, but had been pulled in during previous (successful) exports. This part I'm not totally positive about how it happened that they got added to our solution because they showed up a while ago after someone else had exported. I removed them, tried to re-export the solution, and still the same error, but at least now we're back down to 33 Cloud Flows.

. I've now gone back through all 33 Clouds Flows, resaved and republished each of them.

Hypothesis:

. Something is getting cached somewhere, but I haven't found where.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated

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Using connectors

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

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Hi @TE-16052318-0

So its really pretty easy and I don't mean that to be rude and I know it sounds it so my apologies.

The question I have is this.

For you to use the connection reference, and you said its a solution, that should have been in your solution, either as a New one, or an existing one that you Added.

Go through the History Page of your Solution to see when it changed.

Another option you have is... Is this solution installed somewhere else where its NOT been deleted?

If the answer is yes, spin up an instance.

Import,

Create a solution

Add ONLY that connection reference

Export it

Import that SOlution into your Dev or whereever its missing

Add that to your solution

Happy Exporting

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Pstork1 68,717 Most Valuable Professional on at

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An obvious question, but did you Publish all Customizations before trying the Export? If not then the deletions you made may not have been fully committed yet.

Second suggestion. Have you used the ellipses menu on the solution to Show all Dependencies? That should also surface something like this where a connection reference has been deleted.

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TE-16052318-0 24 on at

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First, answering @Pstork1:

1. Publishing Customizations - Yeah, I've published all customizations every time I've tried to export to no avail :/

2. Solution Dependencies - Also yes, but I get "We didn't find anything to here", so it's not recognizing it in that way.

Also of note the Solution Checker fails with no explanation. I've gone through the docs for debugging on that piece but didn't find anything that matched why it's failing. Also checking dev tools to see if I could find if a message was being suppressed or not being shown for some reason did lead to find an additional response, however it basically said an unknown error occurred and to check the docs with a link to the docs.

Next, to @Michael E. Gernaey:

It's all good, I'll take any ideas.

1. History - In the history, it does show the last time that I exported before the changes as being successful, and then it shows the next time that I tried to export as failing, however it doesn't show anything about what changed, just when it succeeded to export vs when it failed.

2. Other Location - Unfortunately no, it's not installed anywhere else, and the previous exports that I did had no reference to the GUID mentioned in their solution files.

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An idea I've come up with though is removing all of the cloud flows from the solution, try exporting, and if it'll finally export, then adding them back to the solution 1 by 1. I'll post back once I have a little more time to test that. Thanks for the ideas.

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TE-16052318-0 24 on at

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Update, removed all cloud flows, published all customizations, re-exported, same error as before :/

Also for clarification, no Canvas Apps used, just 1 Model Driven app.

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TE-16052318-0 24 on at

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Another Update:

A few more failed attempts:
. After adding all the Cloud Flows back to the solution, I removed the Connection References, published changes, and tried re-exporting, hoping that Power would correct itself and try to pull in the correct CR's. That didn't work.

. I then tried removing the Cloud Flows and the CR's, republished, re-exported, same error as every time before.

. I tried cloning the solution which I wasn't expecting to work, ...and it didn't.

Solutiuon:

Finally, I created a new solution, re-added everything, exporting as I went to make sure it'd work. I've now completely rebuilt the solution as a new solution and both exporting the solution and running the solution checker both work now.

Theory of the Issue:

At one point I did try to rename a Connection Reference which it does give you a warning that it'll effect everything that's using that CR and that it might take a few minutes. Given it was only 2 cloud flows, I rolled the dice.

When it completed, going to the flows that referenced that CR showed the CR with its original name as an option as well as the new name as an option, however they were both grayed out without explanation. I had ultimately then deleted both and pointed those flows actions to using a new CR that was using the Connection the old CR was using before.

In that process, the fact that Power "sort of" renamed the CR, but then somehow made a duplicate of it, breaking the old one and making a duplicate that was broken... something got messed up in the metadata that's not directly accessible either through the UI or the XRM Toolbox (as far as I could find). It's conceivable that the issue could have been uncovered through the API (somehow), but regardless, reconstructing the Solution was the only solution I found. And frankly I would have saved a lot of time if I had just done that yesterday.

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