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What instance shall we choose for excel files updating SharePoint list data

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hey experts, in my scenario, we need to build up a flow to use excel file to update Sharepoint list data. There are 2 approaches i have plan on:

1) Shall I standardize an excel file and update data in the same excel file?

2) drop a new excel file to a folder to trigger the flow (I see instance of "when a file is created in a folder" is available in Power Automate) ?

In my case, I have new excel file everyday to update the Sharepoint list data. If we can drop a new excel file to trigger the flow, it would be much easier for users to get the data updated. Otherwise, the users have to open the excel file and cope paste to original excel file everyday.

Does anyone have any ideas? which approach could be better for this case? and if we want to implement approach 2, is there any use case able to share? Thank you so much!

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Building flows

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eric-cheng 5,171 on at

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Hi @Anonymous ,

It really depends on you and your requirements. If having the same file means having to copy data across manually, it really defeats the purpose of automating via Power Automate. Yes, you could probably automate it too but I don't really see the value.

You can use the when a file is created in a folder trigger and then use the Excel connector i.e. List rows present in a table to read the Excel and write to SharePoint.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Thanks for your response, it is what i am thinking to try. But in the folder, we do not have any excel file yet, how can we use the Excel connector?

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eric-cheng 5,171 on at

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Hi @Anonymous ,

Below is a rough outline of how your flow can work.

1. A trigger will monitor and trigger the flow for new files. You can probably add a condition to check if it is an Excel file.
2. It will then look for Tables within the Excel
3. It will then get rows within the specified Table e.g. Table1

In regards to working with Excel to write to SharePoint, please check out this video tutorial which should provide you with the basics. As you will be working with Dynamic Content, I suggest first uploading a file into your SharePoint library and hard coding your values and working off that to first get the basics. You can then replace hard coded values with Dynamic Content.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Thanks for your demo, what is the purpose for you to create a condition to check Table name? Currently, I am struggling with 2 parts:
1) if we want to update the SP list items, we need to use filter query to have key1 eq key2. But we do not have any key from excel file now ( we have not created a file in the folder)
2) in the folder we do not have any excel file now, after apply to each, we are unable to find any fields to match.
Below is my current try:

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eric-cheng 5,171 on at

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Hi @Anonymous ,

The condition for table name is in case there are multiple tables in the Excel so your flow will know which one to use. You can remove it if you are sure there is only 1 table,

Because your flow is dynamically selecting the file, you won't have the dynamic content to choose from. You can:

1) Manually select the table name (hard code) and which will then give you the dynamic content. Populate your Update Item action and then change it back
2) Use expressions in your Update Item action @item()?['Column1"]

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hey, thanks for your deep explanation. I am still newbie for Flow. In terms of 1) Manually select the table name (hard code), does it mean I need to have an excel file in the folder and then i choose it, in the future, when i drop files in to keep the same file name?
2) Use expressions in your Update Item action @item()?['Column1"]
how do we ask flow to understand match rows to update, and keep rows not needing update?

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