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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Differences in the beh...
Power Automate
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Differences in the behavior of the Power Automate Desktop and WinAutomation [Substract lists] action]

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Posted on by 262

In an Excel data table like the following
Get first free column/row from Excel Worksheet] will not count well if there is a blank string.

Screenshot 2021-01-23 113703.jpg

 

So I used [Substract lists] in Winautomation to count the number of lines, excluding the blank strings.
This will give me the correct number of rows.

 

Screenshot 2021-01-23 115043.jpg

 

 

If I do the same thing with PAD, [Substract lists] will do Distinct processing at the same time.
I can't get the correct row count anymore.

 

 

Screenshot 2021-01-23 115456.jpg

 

 

I don't want it to work differently from WinAutomation.
Please fix this.

 

I have the same question (0)
  • miketran13 Profile Picture
    720 on at

    Hi,

     

    You are right, it does not work as expected with Get first free column/row from Excel. So, I have used Read from CSV file to solve this problem for my flow instead of waiting for MS to fix it.

     

    Screenshot 2021-01-25 123957.png

    miketran13_0-1611553292933.png

     

    Thanks and hope it can help you. 

    Mike

    ---------------------------------

    Did I answer your question? Please consider to Mark my post as a solution! to guide others

  • ZS440 Profile Picture
    262 on at

    Thanks for the reply.
    I tried saving the Excel file as csv.
    But the solution seems to be difficult.
    I have converted the RPA Challenge Excel file to csv.
    The ghost cells remain.
    http://www.rpachallenge.com/

    Screenshot 2021-01-25 233800.jpg

    It is also possible to count with regularized expressions and looping.
    But it is slow.

     

     

    I am now trying a python script action.

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