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How to rename a file with a changing filename from an FTP folder

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hi,

I'm trying to use Power Automate desktop to create a flow that will allow me to connect to an FTP folder, rename a file and then move that file to a sharepoint location.

Now I can connect to the FTP and I can see all my files there, the problem is that the filename that I want to rename will be different every day as it has a date extension. "XXXXX_ddmmyy_hhmmss.xlsx"

How can I make sure that my flow selects the correct file from today in order to rename it? Assuming there could be multiple files in the folder still from previous days.

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VJR 7,635 on at

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Hi @Anonymous

Below is the pseudo logic.
format today's date in a variable in the required format you need ie; ddmmyy

When you loop through the files you can do a wild card check to look for a file that has a pattern as
XXXXX_<your_above_date_variable>_hhmmss.xlsx

Without taking a look I am thinking the wild card to be used is
*_<your_above_date_variable>*.xlsx

The first * would mean anything before the date and the second * would mean anything after the date, and then we have given the extension.
The angular brackets < and > are not to be used. I am just using it for explanation purpose as a placeholder.

If found go ahead and rename it.

This is in a windows file folder not on a FTP but just to give you an example

If the files in folder is as below
Then wild card results into just that one file

If you do not have an option to do a wild card search in the FTP code you are doing then read every file name one by one and check whether it matches this pattern.

After running the Display message showed that the matching date was found at position 5 (starts at 0).
abcd_081021_012345.xlsx

If the value returned is less than 0 then it is not found and go to the next file.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi,

Doesn't seem to work. The flow is running, but it seems as if the flow doesn't detect the file if I use the variable and wildcard. If i use teh full name of todays file without using the variable and wildcard it does find it and download it. So something about that date variable and wildcard makes it so the flow doesn't find the file.

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VJR 7,635 on at

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Hi @Anonymous, I have edited the post and added some PAD screenshots. That will help you to change the date format .

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Nevermind,

You're inital solution works like a charm. It also accepts the wildcard*. The issue was that I incorrectly converted the DateTime to text. I used yyyymmd instead of yyyMMdd.
Thanks for the solution and support!

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