Skip to main content

Notifications

Announcements

Welcome to the Power Platform Communities
News and Announcements icon
Community site session details

Community site session details

Session Id :
Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate - Building Flows / Copying and Sharing an...
Power Automate - Building Flows
Unanswered

Copying and Sharing an Excel File

(0) ShareShare
ReportReport
Posted on by dsilvera 10

HI Power Users.

 

I believe my issue is fairly easy to solve. Here is how my flow works:

I am trying to automate submitting lunch orders to our HR department, by gathering the lunch orders from staff and emailing it to HR. I have a blank excel template (call it lunchtempplate.xslx) that I copy to another folder, create the link and share the link to that new copied file in the Team Chat where staff clicks the link to add their lunch orders, then email the file as an attachment to HR and delete the excel file at the end of the day. This occurs everyday.

 

I got this all working so far. My issue is:

- some users see the old data from the previous day when they click the share link. It seems there is some caching when the excel sheet gets opened in the Excel app on mobile OR Sharepoint doesn't like generating a new link for the same file name in the same location. I don't know. But I want them to get a new blank template to fill in.

 

But I am open to suggestions/workarounds/fixes from your expertise.

Thanks.

  • dsilvera Profile Picture
    dsilvera 10 on at
    Re: Copying and Sharing an Excel File

    Thanks Koen. Getting the lunch menu into the form each day might be the biggest challenge with that (as the menu changes daily), but I appreciate the suggestion.

     

    As for my original query, I got it working.

    When copying the template, I renamed it with the date at the end of the file name using formatDateTime(utcNow(),'dd-MM'). That way it will be viewed as a new document each time it opens.

     

    And I delete the file at the end of the flow. It works.

  • Unknown geen idee Profile Picture
    Unknown geen idee 1,755 on at
    Re: Copying and Sharing an Excel File

    https://forms.microsoft.com/

     

  • dsilvera Profile Picture
    dsilvera 10 on at
    Re: Copying and Sharing an Excel File

    Hey Koen,

    Thanks for your feedback! I'm always looking on ways to improve it, so your ideas are really appreciated!

     

    1. What you do you mean by FORM? Do you mean use a FORM to collect the lunch data instead of the flow I'm using?

    2. Never knew what a PowerApp is but decided to search on it based on your recommendation. Pretty cool app! Will play with it some more and see how best it could fit with my flow.

     

    Just some background on the reason for my FLOW (since you provided some suggestions):

    The lunch menu comes in each day as an email to HR from our lunch providers, which then sends it out to staff. Staff then would fill out the excel sheet in Teams, with their name, and lunch order. And then the final excel sheet gets emailed to HR.

     

    My main goal here is to make life easier for HR to correlate all the orders together (instead of each staff member sending individual orders to HR) and for staff to easily submit their lunch orders.

     

    The excel sheet works for the most part, so HR just copies and paste the orders into 1 excel sheet and sends it to the lunch providers.

     

    PowerApp looks like it would give it a nice interface. Would just need to see how to get the data in there.

  • Unknown geen idee Profile Picture
    Unknown geen idee 1,755 on at
    Re: Copying and Sharing an Excel File

    Dear D,

     

    I know that my suggestion will likely involve some re-development, but I would use a FORM or PowerApp interface to gather input for the lunch orders. If you have gotten the excel input to work, FORM would not be any issue. PowerApp may be a step futher, but has more interface options.

    These 2 options would allow you to control the input better and any versioning/cache issues would not occur.

     

    Hope the suggestion helps,

    Happy flowing,

    Koen

     

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

News and Announcements

Welcome to the Power Platform Communities

Quick Links

Paul Stork – Community Spotlight

We are honored to recognize Paul Stork as our July 2025 Community…

Congratulations to the June Top 10 Community Leaders!

These are the community rock stars!

Announcing the Engage with the Community forum!

This forum is your space to connect, share, and grow!

Leaderboard > Power Automate

#1
Michael E. Gernaey Profile Picture

Michael E. Gernaey 497 Super User 2025 Season 1

#2
David_MA Profile Picture

David_MA 436 Super User 2025 Season 1

#3
Riyaz_riz11 Profile Picture

Riyaz_riz11 244 Super User 2025 Season 1

Last month Overall leaderboard

Featured topics

Start and wait for an approval action

Product updates

Microsoft Power Platform Community release plans