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PAD: Handle Unknown Popup Message

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Posted on by w.p

8,345 Super User 2026 Season 1

Hi,
Is there a way to handle unknown pop-ups message in a legacy desktop app running in a VM with an unattended desktop flow?

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Power Automate Desktop

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eetuRobo 4,493 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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I think it depends on the application. Some apps have clear attributes in UI elements to indicate they are pop-up messages and so you can build a logic to handle those (maybe by send key press enter or close the popup from close button).

To handle all unknown popup messages blindly might be a bit risky. The popup message could ask something very critical. You don't want your flow to just proceed by closing it or pressing ok if you don't know what that does. What if the popup message asks "Do you want to delete this record" or do something else that can't be undone?

I think it's better to try to recreate the exceptions that cause those pop-up messages so that you can build a logic for all those possible exceptions and handle them accordingly.

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w.p 8,345 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @eetuRobo

Could you please share in detail on how to create the exception, for example about generating a sales report with fields like Customer Name, Purchase Date, Purchase Amount, and Email? Some records may have missing fields, like the Purchase Date.
If the Purchase Date is missing, we can use today's date, and if the Customer Name is missing, we can click Yes to generate the report without it.
For any unknown popup messages, send an email notification to the user with an error screenshot.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I really appreciate your help!

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eetuRobo 4,493 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @w.p,

Since I don’t have access to the application, I can’t provide specific instructions on how to handle exceptions in those situations. However, I can offer some general advice. If you could share examples of the popup UI elements, I may be able to assist further. Additionally, please provide a screenshot of the sales report generation window so I can offer more tailored suggestions. It would also help if you could show me what you’ve already built in your flow and highlight where you're encountering issues.

Please explain the process in detail, and include any relevant pictures. Specifically, when you create a sales report in the system, does your flow pull information from an external file like a PDF or Excel, or does it come entirely from within the application itself?

Can you share examples of couple of different popup message UI elements.
So recreate couple of situations that give different popup message and capture the UI element with Add UI element.

Then open the elements in edit to see how they look

Then show picture of the UI element like this. So maybe the Class attribute will always say "Warning" or something else which we can determine it to be an unexpected pop up.

How I would approach it would be to recreate the scenarios which give those popups and build logic for them. So if certain window or element pops up with certain text then have if condition that deals with that.

So for example:

The second action checks if Purchase Date is empty and if it is then it populates it with todays date.
If at the end when flow presses "Generate Report" it gives something else than "Sales Report Generated Successfully" then the flow takes screenshot and sends that to you.

Or you could have "Wait for window content" -action instead of the If window contains. And if the "Sales Report Generated" -UI element never comes up after pressing Generate Report then the action has On error that starts subflow that does the exception handling.

On error on the "Wait for window content" -action would look something like this:

And the subflow you would have the exception handling so at least the screenshot and send email.

Hope this helps :)

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w.p 8,345 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Thank you for taking the time to guide me through.

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