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Calling Power Automate for Desktop from VBA

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Posted on by AR16985421543

Hello!

I have a spreadsheet calculator which requires data from a specific system. I'm trying to automate the scraping of the data to input into the calculator using a mix of VBA and Power Automate for Desktop for the job.

My ultimate aim is that the user will input a reference number into an Excel spreadsheet, click the macro button which will trigger the correct calculator to open. Once open, it will then call the web scrape Power Automate for Desktop flow to gather the data, write this back to the calculator, calculate and save the output somewhere for the user to pick up.

All of the individual steps have been done (opening the correct calculator based on the reference number, the flow which scrapes the data, saving of the output, etc), but I cant seem to figure out how I can get VBA (which is in the Desktop app of Excel, not online version) to call the Flow written in Power Automate for Desktop. Is this even possible?

Worth adding that I have the premium version of Power Automate for Desktop and that this is my first experience with power Automate for Desktop, so by no means am I anything more than a beginner!

Thanks in advance if anyone has the answer to this!

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Power Automate Desktop

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Kaif_Siddique 2,108 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Hi @AR16985421543

Run macros on an Excel workbook:

To run the macro, deploy the Run Excel macro action and populate its name in the Macro field.

Refer the below link for reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/how-to/run-macros-excel

Let me know if any queries.

If I have answered your question, please mark my post as Solved.
If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

Regards
Kaif

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AR16985421543 7 on at

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Thanks Kaif.

Sorry if I wasnt clearer in my original request, I am able to run macros from Power Automate just fine.

What I am trying to do is invoke a flow from VBA as opposed to the other way around. So ultimately I want the VBA macro to call a flow I've designed in Power Automate for Desktop. Is there a way of doing this?

Thanks
Andrew

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momlo 1,527 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Hi @AR16985421543
If you have premium, you can:
- create desktop shortcut and use it to trigger the flow or
- copy the values from the desktop shortcut and trigger the app driectly or
- use URL to trigger the flow or
- create power automate flow that accepts api and then executes the attended desktop flow, and then call the cloud flow from vba, but this will work only for machine set up for this particular pad action in power automate flow

So I would use URL as simplest and cleanest:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/run-desktop-flows-url-shortcuts?source=recommendations

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AR16985421543 7 on at

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That's great - thanks so much! 😊

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