A variable within a variable

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hello.

I have an issue, where I need the name of a variable to be dependent on the value of a different variable.

So I have:

Variable A = %NR% = 1

Then I need a second variable to be dependent on this number.

EX:

Variable B = %Family(%NR%) %. = Family1.

My question how I write this the proper way, so I get the outcome as shown above?

Can someone help? 🙂

Kind Regard

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Power Automate Desktop

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Henrik_M 2,021 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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In this specific example, 'Family1' can be outputted with the sntax %Family%%NR% but I have a feeling that your challenge is a bit more complex. Can you bring more examples?

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Yes it is.
I need to get the variable produced to have a variable within itself.

So as shown above the variable produced should look like this: Fam1URL
But the nr. should be dependent on a different variable. In this case %FamNr%
When I click save or use the option you showed it won't save the variable.
It will just deselect 'Variable produced'.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Then when i increase the variable.
The variable produced should also change name.

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Henrik_M 2,021 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Ahhh...

Scroll down and read about custom objects: Variable data types - Power Automate | Microsoft Docs

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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You cannot create variables using a flow. This is created by design, and the same rule applies in Excel VBA. As useful as it may be they don't allow you to.

Alternatives:

Create a List %URLs%. For example, lets say I am iterating through a list of families, and each family gets a URL, but I don't know how many families there are before the flow starts, so I cannot designate %Family1% through %Family#% before the flow starts. I create a list before the loop on families, and during the loop I add the URL to the List %URLs%. Assuming a 1 to 1 relationship, the index on List %Family% will directly relate to the index on List %URLs%. So when you need to refer back to the URL for a specific family, you can refer back to the %URL% List
You write everything to Excel: Family name column 1, URL column 2. You can look this up later. Or you write the family name to C1 and a lookup formula to D1, then you read the value of the lookup formula to pull the URL later.
A very complex way, that I have succeeded in is calling another bot. This bot's purpose is to create another flow that creates the variables and sets them up as environment variables, then it runs. Then your original bot calls the environment variables that were just created. This is extremely difficult, and I believe extremely unnecessary. I just did it to see if I could.
Good luck!

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