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Help needed taking screenshot of UI element - always fails.

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Posted on by CU-19081228-9

Hello Everyone.

I have a flow that opens Excel, populates data automatically in a table and then goes to a second Excel tab, where a graph is there from the data, and I want it to then take a screenshot of the graph.

I use the Take screenshot of UI element action for this. I click the chart area of the graph and then save it to a file.

The issue is that the flow never seems to take the screenshot and just fails with the error 'failed to take screenshot of UI element'.

I can see the element on the screen as I type this thread.

I went in to the UI settings of the captured UI element (Local Computer > Window 'Data - Excel' > Image 3) and investigated the selector. When I tested it it selects the correct Excel chart area, as expected.

I even put in a 60 second delay to slow everything down during this process - can anyone give me tips on how to get the screenshot to actually be taken?

I did manage to get it working once, but the screenshot was just black, even though the UI element was clearly visible on the screen.

Many thanks.

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Power Automate Desktop

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Can you share a screenshot of the element selector from PAD?
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CU-19081228-9 on at

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@Agnius is this what you are after? Thanks.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Yes. Is the chart name always the same? Can it fail because of you trying to capture a different chart?
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CU-19081228-9 on at

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@Agnius The chart comes from a spreadsheet in a different tab.

Each time my flow runs it adds a new row of data to the Excel spreadsheet which then means that the chart updates too but it's essentially the same chart - would that be an issue?

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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I don't think it should. Does the name of the Excel file change?
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CU-19081228-9 on at

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No, the file is always the same. I'm completely stumped.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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I am able to take a screenshot of the chart successfully. The selector is the same, except for the name of the Excel file and the sheet, as I didn't bother to rename them. The ordinal value of the image is 3 and not 1 like in your case, though. Not sure if that makes any difference, but perhaps you captured a part of your chart and not its entirety. I've tried disabling the ordinal property and it failed, but with it being set to eq(3) it works fine.
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CU-19081228-9 on at

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Thank you @Agnius for taking the time to help, I appreciate it.

I am just running my flow after making a few changes, the changes I have made are:

1 - Filtering the Excel data to show data from today only, which will reflect in the graph (maybe too much data was a thing?)
2 - Setting Power Automate to screenshot the entire Excel window, not just the chart element.

I'll let you know the results - thank you!

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CU-19081228-9 on at

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@Agnius This approach of capturing the Excel window instead seems to have worked, I also added some steps to make sure the window was focused before the screenshot was taken.

Thank you so much for all your help and suggestions!

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