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Flow doesn't wait for Excel Online - Add a row into a table to complete before moving to next action

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Posted on by dave-jorgensen

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I have a flow where I am adding a row to an excel online (stored in sharepoint document library) file, using the 'Add a row into a table'.

Immediately after that action, I am copying the file to a different folder.

the problem is, the flow progresses past the action 'add a row into a table' before the file update is actually complete, so the copy of the file doesn't contain my most recent addition. If I look at the file I originally added the row to, the data is present there, which seems like an automatic indication that the copy file action started before the file update was complete.

Is there any way to work around this?

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v-yuazh-msft on at

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Hi @ dave-jorgensen,

Could you please share a screenshot of the configuration of your flow?

Please take a try to add a delay under the "Add a row into a table" action of Excel Online connector as screenshot below:

Please let me know if your issue could be solved.

Regards,
Alice Zhang

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dave-jorgensen 502 on at

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Hi Alice. No need for me to post a screen shot of flow - it looks exactly like yours.
I overcame the issues in the same way (adding a delay).

I guess I expected the 'adding a row to a table' to be a synchronous event, and that the flow would wait for that to actually complete before moving to the next action in the flow. Obviously that's not the case. Having to delay the flow artificially to overcome this works, but is pretty irritating and I'm sure causes lots of confusion / issues with users.

I understand that some actions, it's fine if they are asynchronous. Other times, users require an action to be synchronous, and certainly expect it to be so.

It would be ideal if actions had 2 things:
Some indication that the flow doesn't actually wait for the operation to complete before moving on
A flag to force the flow to wait for the operation to complete before moving on

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dave-jorgensen 502 on at

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Really isn't a solution. The issue is, the flow doesn't wait for the action to complete.
putting in a delay is just recognizing that yes, the flow doens't wait for the action to complete, so we artificially wait. What if the 'behind the scenes' stuff in the action takes a long time, or server is slow, and now takes more than 1 minute? Then suddenly what you thought would work, doesn't. Extremely unreliable. That's why we need flow to actually wait for the action to complete

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moutinhoabreu 170 on at

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I'm having exactly the same problem. The question is i'm trying 5 sec delay, 20 sec delay, going to raise to 1 minute delay. But if the excel file has more lines than my test what delay time it will be the appropriate ?

Well i'm fighting with Flow to populate an excel file form a blank excel with a table inside and had lots of barriers.
Begining with the obligation to have a template in blank, beucase excel doesn't acepts dynamic data on the file location and now when i thougth, ok, lets arrange a workaround this happens.

Super frustrating.

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ryanperrymba 12 on at

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Anybody ever come up with a better solution? As noted above, simply waiting doesn't guarantee that the updates actually occur. In the settings there is a an "Asynchronous Pattern" option, which I thought might change the behavior and force synchronous operation, but no such luck.

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ryanperrymba 12 on at

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We've been aware of this and it continues to haunt us. If adding mutliple rows, we've had to add a delay between each row added so we don't innundate the server. Back searching for a setting to run the updates in synchronous mode, and have posted an idea on the FLOW Ideas site: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Synchrous-Execution-IE-Excel-Add-Row-Sharepoint-Copy-File/idi-p/327195#M15554. Please vote it up.

In the mean time, we are just adding manual delays and crossing our fingers that they are long enough / we don't ever hit the server when it's too busy.

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pmoricz 8 on at

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Hey @ryanperrymba
Have you found a solution for this? I have already voted up your idea. I've run into this problem multiple times now and it makes all my flow very unreliable!

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dave-jorgensen 502 on at

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Guess you could try:
Count rows in excel file ( eg 10)
Update Excel by adding row
Loop until rows = 11
Wait a little bit
Count rows in excel file

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pmoricz 8 on at

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thanks dave!

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iampegram 11 on at

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The sad thing is, the connector can see the data as 'present' before it's actually written to the file. I have a Do-Until loop that uses the List Rows from a Table action to compare the number of rows to the expected value, and it's still missing a row in the final file. The row is present in the output of the last run of the Do-Until loop, but not in the spreadsheet file itself. Very frustrating! All I want to do is generate a spreadsheet and attach it to a list item...

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