Selecting Cells in Excel

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Posted on by OnurOnal

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Hello,

When iterating through an Excel spreadsheet, I am required the fill in the first row of a column if I wish to select the cells of that column. For example in the image below, I need to type 'B' in the first row of column 2 to be able to select its cells using CurrentItem['B']. I import this Excel spreadsheet so it is impractical for me to populate the first row for every column. How can I select the cells of that column without having to populate the first row?

Screenshot 2023-06-13 at 6.00.18 PM.png

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Power Automate Desktop

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @OnurOnal

You can use select cells action to select the cell of an excel workbook

You can select range of cells or single cell as well to select excel workbook
in above screenshot, i have used the action to select A1 , so that is why i have added Start column and Start ROW , end column and end row as same itself 🙂

Hope it helps !

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OnurOnal 158 on at

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Hello @Nived_Nambiar,

What I meant by selecting the cell is obtaining the value inside that specific cell. For context, below is an image of where I am using this in my flow. I want to be able to select the cells in column 2 without having to type the letter 'B' in its first row.

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @OnurOnal

To get cell value of each row per column by not specifying column name, use the flow design as below

Bot is looping through each row in ExcelData , now inside the loop it is looping through each cell value in the CurrentItem row , i.e CurrentItem2 is the cell value 🙂

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OnurOnal 158 on at

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@Nived_Nambiar,

I believe there may be a misunderstanding. I am trying to select the values at only one specific column. The issue is that I have to manually fill in the first row of that column to be able to select it. For example: In the image below the letter 'B' was entered by me (normally that cell is empty). The reason I entered letter 'B' is to be able to say CurrentItem['B'] and select whatever cell is at column 2 for that iteration of the loop. If I did not enter the letter 'B' that cell would be empty and I would not be able to select column 2. How can I select a column without having to add text to its first row?

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @OnurOnal

You can use column index instead of column name

like CurrentItem[1] to select first column values

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OnurOnal 158 on at

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@Nived_Nambiar,

This works, thank you.

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OnurOnal 158 on at

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@Nived_Nambiar,

After doing some testing I noticed that the solution only works in if statements. It does not work when using the "Write to Excel worksheet" action. I am providing two images: In the first image %CurrentItem[2]% works, but in the second image %CurrentItem[2]% does not work.

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @OnurOnal
Any error is thrown ?

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OnurOnal 158 on at

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@Nived_Nambiar,

No error, it just fails to pull the data.

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @OnurOnal

Ok so data written to excel is seen as empty

have you checked the value of CurrentItem[2] before writing ?

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