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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Remove/delete text in ...
Power Automate
Answered

Remove/delete text in Power Automate Dedktop

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Posted on by 75

I'm looking for a method to delete some text in a text file, there's no dedicated action to delete or remove text.

I tried using the "replace text" action, by filtering for the text to be removed and leaving the "replace with" field empty, it does work with every text editor I have ever worked with, but "replace with" field can not be empty.

I also tried  "^$" (without the quotes) which is essentially NULL in regex, but it was treated as text (even with regex turned on).

Seems like a rather odd and obvious omission, I guess I must be missing something really simple.

 
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  • Verified answer
    fraenK Profile Picture
    2,125 on at

    It's not really obvious 😉

    The "empty string" variable is: %""%

  • Lipsitz Profile Picture
    75 on at

    Works!

    Thanks so much! 

    Although it is a little counterintuitive, I thought everything between two %'s is supposed to be a variable.

    I was searching the webs for a while, could not find much documentation.

  • fraenK Profile Picture
    2,125 on at

    Sometimes it's good to have a look at the old WinAutomation documentation 😉

    https://docs.winautomation.com/V9_0/en/--and----notation.html

  • lendrahemp Profile Picture
    6 on at

    It doesn't really solve the problem. If I wanted to replace the string with an empty one, it would work, but what if I wanted to delete the string?

  • joergh Profile Picture
    46 on at

    You put it in a nutshell. If at least the documentation would not adhere to medieval teaching practices. It is a pity that in 2022 you still have to waste a lot of time on such simple information %""%. Why an error message is displayed at all when a find and replace Text if the user does not enter anything when replacing is inexplicable to me.

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