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Posted on by ddelias

I have this flow

which deletes files older than 15 days, it worked fine until the month changed to July and it does not delete the files, is it possible that this is the reason?
It is also true that I have more than 20 files in the directory to delete, can it be for this reason?

any idea?

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,968 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

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Hi @ddelias

Thank you for sharing the flow picture, but you are asking us to debug your code when you didn't share the actual expressions.

Go into a Run, look at the inputs and outputs of the actions. My guess is your Expression is probably wrong.

But we need to see the actual data that is flowing through one of the flows that you think should have deleted data.

Also, have you looked at the last modified date of the files???? Are there any files to actually delete?

So when you say something doesn't work, try to build a clear visual explanation

here are my files, see the last modified date is over 15 days

here are my expressions

here is the expression in a run, it shows the date that should have deleted the file etc

If I have helped you, I would really appreciate if you please Mark my answer as Resolved/Answered, and give it a thumbs up, so it can help others

Cheers

Thank You
Michael Gernaey MCT | MCSE | MCP | Self-Contractor| Ex-Microsoft
https://gernaeysoftware.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgernaey

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,968 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

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Hi @ddelias

Thank you for sharing the flow picture, but you are asking us to debug your code when you didn't share the actual expressions.

Go into a Run, look at the inputs and outputs of the actions. My guess is your Expression is probably wrong.

But we need to see the actual data that is flowing through one of the flows that you think should have deleted data.

Also, have you looked at the last modified date of the files???? Are there any files to actually delete?

So when you say something doesn't work, try to build a clear visual explanation

here are my files, see the last modified date is over 15 days

here are my expressions

here is the expression in a run, it shows the date that should have deleted the file etc

If I have helped you, I would really appreciate if you please Mark my answer as Resolved/Answered, and give it a thumbs up, so it can help others

Cheers

Thank You
Michael Gernaey MCT | MCSE | MCP | Self-Contractor| Ex-Microsoft
https://gernaeysoftware.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgernaey

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ddelias 63 on at

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if sorry, just say things as if they were known
today is july 3rd and I would have to delete the files of june 16th and they are still in the directory as shown in the image.

I have tried these two expressions in the condition
formatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(), -15), 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ')
addDays(utcNow(), -15)
but it only works for the current month

regards

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,968 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

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hi @ddelias

Go into the flow, on the details page, open one of the runs (like today) that you think would have deleted files.

Go to the apply to each

Step through it for each iteration

look directly at the Condition

What value was in the left and what value is in the right

That will tell us if the code thought it should have deleted or not (i'll say the engine).

also, in that list of files you shared, is that the created date or modified date?

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ddelias 63 on at

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good morning
inside the directory where the files to be deleted are, there are 92, it only checks 20 (this is what appears in list files in folder) and leaves the 15 most recent ones, I thought this 15 was because I put in the expression this: addDays(utcNow(),-15,'yyyy-MM-dd') but I modified the 15 for a 25 and it does the same thing

in the apply to each only checks 20 of the 92 and all of them in false (that's why it doesn't delete any) because they are not older than 15 days as you can see in the image.

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ddelias 63 on at

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another thing I have noticed is that it checks until the word June appears.

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,968 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

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Hi @ddelias

Sorry but I am a little confused now. Do you have a development environment where it is acting the same? Or is this just in production and nowhere else to test? In your Compose, which I am guessing its the Last Modified Date or the File in the Loop? That clearly shows the file is NOT over 15 days old, so it wouldn't be deleted.

You shared a picture of files from June before, now this list shows files from this week. You have to narrow it down and not try to solve it for all files.

Actions to Take please

1. I see that your flow has 20 iterations in the Apply to each. Click through every single one of them and look at the Compose output. See if ANY of the Last Modified dates are older than 15 days. If you find that none of them are, then it makes sense that its not doing anything.

If you still believe it SHOULD be doing something then do the following.

If I have helped you, I would really appreciate if you please Mark my answer as Resolved/Answered, and give it a thumbs up, so it can help others

Cheers

Thank You
Michael Gernaey MCT | MCSE | MCP | Self-Contractor| Ex-Microsoft
https://gernaeysoftware.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgernaey

1. Pick a file that is older than 15 days and make sure it's the last modified time/date not created

2. Grab the name so you know what it is

3. If you are able, because the is DEV, then ad another compose where the first one is, and put the File Name in it.

4. Run the Flow

Once again, review the Run and step through each of the Iterations of Apply to Each

Review the Name of the File to verify if its the one you are debugging

If so then look at the compose of the last modified date time

If its not showing the date that should be deleted, then we have to dig further.

Right now, the most important is, can you reproduce it with a single file that SHOULD be deleted and isn't and not look at lists, thats not going to help. Narrow the debugging field a ton.

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ddelias 63 on at

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I will try to explain , but for me it is difficult because English is not my mother tongue and I am not an expert in power automate.
if I put that it deletes the files of less than 5 days old, it does it because it does not exceed the number of 20, but as what I pretend is that it deletes the files of 15 days and there are 92 files, then it does not do it, but if I do not exceed the 20 files if it deletes them, I do not know if I have explained well
the problem that I see is that there are more than 20 files and it is not able to check all the files.
What do you think?

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,968 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

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hi @ddelias

Are all the files in the Robot Folder or are some in subfolders?

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ddelias 63 on at

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all are in Robot folder

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