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Converting Word-Document to PDF Action fails

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Posted on by servicesGB95

Hello everyone,

in my project I am getting some data from Power Apps and then in Automate I am using the data to populate a MS Word template and then generating a .PDF from it.
Here's an overview of the main part of the flow:

Now I got the problem that the Action "Word-Dokument in PDF konvertieren" (Poplulate MS Word Template) SOMETIMES gives the error message: "Failed to access file". The weird thing ist that this only happens every now and then, even when I make the exact same Inputs in Power Apps.
Does anyone have an idea how to fix this? Is it possible to re-execute that specific "Word-Dokument in PDF konvertieren" when it fails? Or even re-execute the whole flow when that action fails ? As this is the main output of my project I can not allow that action to fail...

Thanks for your help!
Julian

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abm abm 32,985 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @servicesGB95

After create file step add a delay action step. This could be system still creating the file and not ready to convert to PDF.

Thanks

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servicesGB95 48 on at

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Hey,
already tried that, but that doesn't seem to be the best solution, the error still occurs...

Greetings
Julian

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servicesGB95 48 on at

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Update:

after further research I found out that the 'Convert Word Document to PDF' (still) seems to be buggy with dynamic files which are located in SharePoint. Many people are complaining about such problems, but there doesn't seem to be a fix for it yet.

I still found a workaround to fix the problem, my last 20 Flow exections were successful:

At the beginning of my flow I initialized a boolean variable called ConvertSuccess = false.
In the main part of my flow I added the "Do until" action which checks the value of ConvertSuccess. Only if the Convert Word Cocument to PDF action succeeds, this variable will be set to true and the loop will be finished.
In the Run-History of my Flow I see that the runtimes now reach from 0:20 min to 6min, but they are successful, which is the most important to me.
Hope this also works for you, Microsoft definitly has to fix that buggy action (especially because it's premium and my company pays for it)

Cheers
Julian

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rjhale 212 on at

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@servicesGB95 This seems like a good approach to fixing the intermittent problems I've been getting with the Convert to PDF action, however; I'm running into a problem. I've set my Flow up the same way, but I'm seeing the convert to pdf action fail occasionally, and it just stops the entire Flow rather than loop and try again. Here is how I have things configured:

And here is the results of one of my failures from last night:

As you can see in the results, the Flow fails after the first attempt and never moves onto the Delay action. Any idea what I may be doing wrong here?

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