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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Cannot customise 'Crea...
Power Automate
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Cannot customise 'Create CSV Table'

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Hi. I'm really struggling with the 'Create CSV Table' flow when importing date from a Sharepoint List.

 

The interface is completely unintuitive to me. When I create the CSV table with Columns set to 'Automatic' everything works fine, but it's not often that a whole list is useful as a CSV. When I change the Columns selection to 'Custom' everything falls down. I get what the UI designer is going for - placing individual column names into the expanding menu of columns, but the output doesn't work at all. Specifically, everything is on one line and many escape characters are included. Can anybody provide some documentation on exactly how to use this feature? It will be very useful to me but at the moment I can't figure it out at all.

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  • v-monli-msft Profile Picture
    on at

    Hi @Anonymous,

     

    I'm investigating on this issue and will get back once I got any update.

     

    Regards,

    Mona

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    on at

    Thank you - It's good to know that these boards are monitored.

     

    Please feel free to ask me for any details relating to how I'm using the feature if it will help you to bug hunt.

  • v-monli-msft Profile Picture
    on at

    Hi @Anonymous,

     

    Would you please share the whole configuration of this flow? Including the columns setting of the csv file?

     

    Regards,

    Mona

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    on at

    Sure:

     

    I have a list of worksites. Column names are like:

     

    Name;Latitude;Longitude;Elevation;Hazards;Last Inspected;

     

    1 - Select flow 'Copy Shareporint List items into a CSV each week'

    2 - Opt to use my SharePoint Account

    3 - 'Get Items'

        3.1 Select my Sharepoint Site

        3.2 Select my List Name

    4 - 'Create CSV Table'

    Screen Shot 2017-08-16 at 10.00.30 am.png

     

    5 - 'Get Current Time' unchanged from default option utcnow();

     

    6 - 'Create File'

      6.1 Select a subdirector in my 'Onedrive for Business' account

     

    7 - Select Save Flow

     

    8 - Run Flow

      8.1 - Flow takes approximately 2 seconds to run

      8.2 - Out out is the whole list in CSV format, looks like I would expect (some information blurred in screenshot)

     

       

     

    Screen Shot 2017-08-16 at 10.04.26 am.jpg

     

    Now - I want to customise this to only output a few columns.... Back into 'Edit Flow'

     

    9 - Select 'Columns' to 'Custom'

      9.1 - Use the dynamic selector to add column names to the required header columns, in this case I have selected Name, Laititude and Longitude

     

      

    Screen Shot 2017-08-16 at 10.12.39 am.png

     

      My expectation is that this would result in a CSV file with:

           Headers in the columns

          The Headers called 'Name', 'Latitude', and 'Longitude'

          The date in those columns corresponding to the list columns 'Short Name', 'Latitude' and 'Longitude'

     

    10 - Save the flow 

    11 - Run the flow

      11.1 - Flow takes 40 seconds (flow using 'default' attributes took 2)

     

    12 View CSV file:

      CSV File is all on one line. Data is not consitend (some list content is concatenated), lots of ascii control characters (\r\n)

      Basically, a mess.

     

    Screen Shot 2017-08-16 at 10.20.43 am.png

     

     I'm happy to send the full output file to the Microsoft team for a look, but I won't paste it to a public forum.

     

    Hope that helps.

     

    Dan

     

     

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    on at

    Hello,

     

    I was able to do this by using the "Data Operation" "Select".

     

    First I get the list items, then I use the Select Data Operation and you can set it up to get the columns you need, and finally to create the CSV table, instead of using your current input, just use the Output from the Select Data Operation, and that`s it, you get the CSV file with only the columns you need.

     

    Please let me know if this worked and if you were able to try this.

     

    Regards.

  • luuminhvuong93 Profile Picture
    300 on at

    @Anonymous Hi there, could you please kindly share the photo of all the steps?

    I have never used flow , so it is hard for me to imagine how everything works

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    on at

    Sure,

     

    Well, first you get the items from SharePoint or wherever you need.

     

    Then, you add a "Data Operations - Select" action, this gives you the ability to select only the columns you need.

     

    Then, the output of the previous action, use it as input in a "Data Operations - Create CSV Table".

     

    And in the end what I did was to send the CSV file as an attachment.

     

    Does it make sense?

     

    See the screenshots for more references.

     

    Regards.

     

    select data operation 2.pngselect data operation 3.pngselect data operation.png

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    on at

    Hi @Anonymous , @Anonymous , @luuminhvuong93

     

    I see that in the screen shot of the CSV file there are columns that have encrypted data like @data">.. , i got the same too and i didn't know how to fix it so it become like a normal text value

    Any ideas ? solutions ?

    Thank you everyone

     

    Screen Shot 2017-08-16 at 10.04.26 am.jpg

  • DudelerDad Profile Picture
    47 on at

    I can't thank you enough for showing how to email this file. I had given up and thought this was impossible.

    As for the formating of some of the fields I found that using different Dynamic content such as Field 'Value' if available helps. Why all fields don't have a field value I have no idea. 

    I'm still struggling with formating the Date field that I want to import. I assume I need to use Apply to each.

     

  • Community Power Platform Member Profile Picture
    on at

    I find that I can modify Dynamic content dates as follows:

     

    • formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'yyyy-MM-dd')
     
    But I cannot click the Expressions tab containing the SharePoint list fields and use the same technique on those date fields (such as date created or date modified). Hoping someone will tell us how to do that.
     
    Bill

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