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Wait for file - wildcard?

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Posted on by Lahole

Ì have a folder where XML-files with unknown name will be written to.
It would be perfect if you could add a "Wait for file" and set the path with a wildcard - e.g. C:\Temp\*.xml but this doesn't seem to work.

This would be in a while loop - and the flow would wait for a file to appear and then do certain operations.

I could use a "Get files in folder" in a loop with a for each - but that doesn't seem effective.

Is there any other way to solve this?

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Power Automate Desktop

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PierrePetrucci 3 on at

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+1 I also need to use the same in my organisation if someone know how to do it ...
Thks

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fraenK 2,125 on at

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PAD has no local triggers. So you can only check the files in a folder within a loop and filter by new files with the extension xml. Or schedule the run through a cloud flow.

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LucianoGomesBR on at

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Hi @LHole ,
I was looking for the same information but I did not find it.
So I created a manual checker as you can see below
Get files in folder allows you to use wildcard *.
I hope this helps.

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Highboy 1,187 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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The wildcard option may have worked in versions prior to 2.14.
As of 2.14 the wildcard stopped working in file operations.
But Microsoft will have a new version ready mid-dec. that should fix all the 2.14 bugs. or so they say.

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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How often do you plan to run this? Like one user said, there is no trigger, you still have to start the process manually.

if you could record somewhere the last time the bot was ran (ex. Environment variable or in Excel, etc), then you could say:

Get files (*.xml) in folder - sort by date last modified descending
for each file in files
if date last modified is before %lastrun% (the date/time of the last run)
End flow
endif
‘Do something with file
End (for each)

this will process them in order of most current to least current and will stop on the file last modified before the last run.

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gabriel_ilx 30 on at

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This solution worked for me, thanks!

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