Reading multiple files, folders and subfolders

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Posted on by Owlie__

Hello,

I'm working on a desktop flow with the general intent of sending emails with attachments.

However, I need to do this on a larger scale involving multiple folders, subfolders and excel worksheets.

I figured I could try to read filepaths from a separate excel, but that didn't seem to work.

Is there an alternative?

Thanks in advance.

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Power Automate Desktop

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VJR 7,635 on at

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Hi @Owlie__

You could still read the filepath from a separate Excel as you mentioned.
Can you share what didn't work and what issues you faced.

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Owlie__ 8 on at

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I read the folders and added the filepaths of specific subfolders and files to a separate excel, then tried reading the excel. From there, I attempted to launch different excels from that spreadsheet using a loop.

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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Are you able to share an example of your spreadsheet. For instance, if you had something like this, it would be easily doable:

Under this example, we could set up a for each, and it will run through each row adding the attachments to the email until the email address is different, then it would send that email off with the attachments before continuing to the next row.

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Pavel_NaNoi 1,074 on at

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Definitely need more detail on the situation you're facing preferably with some screenshots to help with the explanation, otherwise can't you just use a "Get files" action + a "For each" loop to email these files?

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Owlie__ 8 on at

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The situation is as such:

My folder contains a group of folders for different categories, each containing a subfolder of PDFs and an Excel which is a list of emails I need to send these PDFs to. Instead of creating a flow for each folder, I wanted to try to make a single flow that can loop through all the folders.

I have made a separate Excel to compile the file paths of each folder to have the flow launch the few excel listings and send the emails from there.
CategoryName Folder SubFolder ExcelFile
Category A C:\Folder1 C:\SubFolder1 List1.xlsx
Category B C:\Folder2 C:\SubFolder2 List2.xlsx

However, it seems that the flow is not able to read the file paths from Excel because I kept getting the error "Argument 'Folder/Path' must be 'Folder/File'".

I'm not sure if it's a good enough explanation of my current situation, but I hope it clarifies.

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VJR 7,635 on at

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Hi @Owlie__ ,

.
CategoryName Folder SubFolder ExcelFile
Category A C:\Folder1 C:\SubFolder1 List1.xlsx
Category B C:\Folder2 C:\SubFolder2 List2.xlsx

In your PAD flow are you combining the path as follows
Folder + Subfolder + Excel File

If so this would be incorrect because then it will result as below
C:\Folder1\C:\Subfolder1\List.xlsx

If you can see the path is coming out to be incorrectly

It should be in the format
C:\Folder1\SubFolder1\List.xlsx

Arrange your Subfolder column to display only as Subfolder1.

While looping through the folders, at the beginning you can simply use a "Display message" action and see what path it is picking.

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Owlie__ 8 on at

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Thank you!

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