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Sharepoint "Extract folder" action has started to regularly fail

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Posted on by Spinner

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Has anyone recently had issues with the Sharepoint "Extract folder" action? It had been working reliably in my flow, but in recent weeks it started failing very frequently. Extraction of the folder starts, with some of the archive's files appearing in the target folder, only for it to abruptly halt mid-extraction.

The error message is "Action 'Extract_folder' failed: Destination folder '***path removed***' already exists. To overwrite this folder, set overwrite to 'true'" - which doesn't make sense, as 1) the folder definitively does not exists before the flow starts, 2) the action successfully creates the folder and starts extracting files into it.

I've tried:

enabling "Asynchronous Pattern"
setting the Retry policy to none

The archives are simple, flat structures, with files typically under 10MB each.

Have there been any observed changes to "Extract folder" of late - such as stricter enforcement of limits on archives?

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Haque 3,653 on at

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Hi @Spinner,

Can you please check a previous flow run or a failed run? If it happens it might leave the folder behind, so it actually exists even if you think it doesn’t. Let's double-check the folder path in SharePoint or OneDrive to confirm.

I am sure some clues I tried to give. If these clues help to resolve the issue brought you by here, please don't forget to check the box Does this answer your question? At the same time, I am pretty sure you have liked the response!

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Spinner 118 on at

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Thank you for the reply @Haque, but no, the folder definitely doesn't exist before the flow run.

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Haque 3,653 on at

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Hi @Spinner,

Thanks for sharing.

I am sorry to mistrust you! The given error message suggests that there is an overwrite parameter that can be set to true. I am sure you have tried to see/check or test, at least what happens if we set true the overwrite parameter. But if not you have tried and if the action supports - can you please do that once to see? Please don't mind.

If setting true doesn't help, I have two options to suggest (just logical):

1. Before the extraction - ad a step to check if the folder exists, don't delete it (if exists). This will make sure we are clean.

2. If it allows and possible let's generate a unique folder name each run (timestamp and GUID are our friends) to avoid conflict.

I am sure some clues I tried to give. If these clues help to resolve the issue brought you by here, please don't forget to check the box Does this answer your question? At the same time, I am pretty sure you have liked the response!

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Spinner 118 on at

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The action does run if Overwrite is set to Yes, but that isn't a fix. I realise there are manual workarounds to guard against overwrites, but fundamentally it shouldn't be failing when it's set to No and there isn't a pre-existing folder.

That this is a bug in the implementation on the Microsoft side is further confirmed by the fact that if I recreate the action and delete the old one, the new one will work, despite having exactly the same parameters. For the moment, this will suffice, although I have noticed that after editing elsewhere in the flow, the new working action will suddenly start to fail. So my current 'fix' is to delete the action, re-add the action, test and deploy.

I hope Microsoft take a look at the action and fix whatever is faulty in the implementation.

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