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Resource attempting to access is locked

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Posted on by lardo5150 Microsoft Employee

I have seen numerous posts on this, but I don't think this has ever been solved.

For me I have two flows.

1. This one take over an hour to run. I am using Excel Online Business as the files I am accessing are on a One Drive for Business Service account. The List Rows is at the very beginning. At the end I have a piece that moves the file to another folder.

Flow 1.JPG

This one I have no issues with, it runs fine each time.

The second flow I have the List rows is more towards the end, and this one only takes like 20 seconds.

I USED to have a part at the very end where it would look for files, find the file we were pulling table data from, and move it to another folder. Each time, we would fail on this step with the following:

flow 2.JPG Flow 3.JPG

As you can see, I even tried a Delay of 2 minutes. I would still get the locked error.

The file was NOT open, and I could open it, move it, and delete it, once the flow was over (manually in File Explorer).

I am using the Excel Online Business Connector for all my flows.

I figured since the other works all the time, maybe Flow is holding onto the connection in the background or something.

So I created a seperate flow that would come in and move the file. I ran this after the main flow ran.

I STILL got the resource locked.

Has anyone figured anything out on the resource locked with Excel connector being used?

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Using connectors

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yashag2255 24,769 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Hi @lardo5150

As per the documentation, the file could be locked for upto 6 minutes. You might want to add a slightly more delay of about 7 minutes and try again. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/excelonlinebusiness/

Hope this Helps!

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS!

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Community Power Pla... on at

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I had the same issue, and checked that the document was in a secure or protected mode. By just disabling that the issue has been solved.

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omkanade5 4 on at

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I faced the same issue.
The Excel business connector locks the excel for 6mins for update or delete of file.
So set a delay of 7+ mins and try.
This solved my problem.
Thanks.

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omkanade5 4 on at

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If the problem exists even after including delay of 7+ mins.
Try removing the delay and simply run the workflow after 7mins.
This should work.

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timothy_bohte 44 on at

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Hi @lardo5150
I had the same issue and found your message here.
Thanks for sharing your issue with the community.
Although it has been more than a year since you posted this, I would like to share my investigation and solution with you.
I read about the 7+ minutes lock and wanted to find out what the actual locking time was in my situation. Spoiler alert, it was much less, only about 4.5 minutes. I don't want my users to wait any second longer than really needed so I came with the following solution.
Create a status variable in the top of your flow. Add a Do until action below the step that causes the lock issue. Add as condition: status variable equals Ready.
Move the delay action in that action and set it to 10 seconds. Add your Move... action below in the same action and add another action to set the status variable to Ready.
The rest of your flow should be outside of Do until action.
Now your flow will try to do your Move... action every 10 seconds until it succeeds and continue with the rest of the flow.
Sorry that I don't have screen shots for you as examples, but I'll blog about it later with pictures. Please check in on my blog on Linkedin in a while: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/timothy-s-newsletter-6884550608553033728/

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