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PAD Flow Fails to Sync Excel with MS Forms Data and Control Browser in Task Scheduler Execution

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Posted on by CC-25071258-0

Hi community,

We have a super simple Power Automate Desktop flow that retrieves an Excel file, which is fed by responses from an MS Forms survey, and downloads it locally. The flow is triggered from the Windows Task Scheduler.

The form belongs to an Office 365 group, and the Excel file is supposed to update automatically, but this isn't happening unless we manually open the Excel link. When we do this, a synchronization progress message appears, and the records are updated.

I've read extensively about this issue (some threads include this one), but nothing has resolved our problem.

We thought of a workaround to include a step in the flow that opens the browser with the Excel link, waits a few seconds, and then closes it before proceeding to download the file. This works when the flow is run manually, but when it's executed from the Windows Task Scheduler, despite having the Power Automate extension installed (I’ve tried both Edge and Chrome), the flow fails with the message "Failed to assume control of browser."

Are these two issues (the browser control failure and the synchronization problem between Forms and Excel) known bugs that will be addressed? Could someone help us with this?

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,345 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi

I believe our issue is simply, that the Task Scheduler Account you are running it is, cannot get access, even with the Extensions because it does not have rights to do so.

Who are you running Task scheduler As?

Also remember that most likely its not being run in the context of a user in the O365 group, which when you open it it is.

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CC-25071258-0 15 on at

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Hi everyone,

Despite the fact that @FLMike's solution is likely also useful, we've finally implemented the approach suggested in this thread by Agnius Bartninkas:

Link to the thread

For those experiencing synchronization issues between forms and Excel (via SharePoint), this workaround should work, though it comes with a few caveats:

If the flow is triggered by Task Manager (as in our case), it should be configured as "Run only when user is logged on," meaning it requires the user to be actively logged in.

A delay must be configured between the call to the browser and the step of retrieving the file to give Excel enough time to synchronize.

I must say that my experience with Power Automate so far has been quite disappointing. We started using it with high expectations, but we’ve encountered significant hurdles at every small step we’ve tried to take. In fact, we are working with version 2.39 (which is quite outdated) just to avoid dealing with a bug that appears in later versions (Link to the thread). Despite having access to the premium version and technical support, the support has been inadequate, and we’ve ultimately had to figure things out on our own. My impression is that this tool is still very immature.

Regards,

Cristina

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