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How to connect to Dropbox (or FTP) in Powerapps without specifying excel file

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Posted on by mstavers

I am trying to create a PowerApp that consolidates information from a number of sources (Facebook, Twitter, a Dropbox folder and an FTP folder).

I can make connections to all four within Powerapps environment, but when I add them as datasources to a Powerapp the Dropbox and FTP ones insist on me specifying an Excel file to link to. I don't want to link to an Excel file - I just want to use the "get files in folder" functions.

I feel like I am missing something basic here. I have worked out I could create a flow to do this, concatenate the file list and pass back to PowerApps ti deconcatenate but that seems like a long way around.

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Building Power Apps

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ZePowerDiver 279 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hello mstavers,

I think you should create a Flow that uses the Dropbox connector to get list of files.
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v-xida-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @mstavers ,

Do you want to use the "Get files in folder" action of Dropbox connector within your app?

Based on the issue that you mentioned, I think you have some misunderstanding on the data source types in PowerApps.

Currently, within PowerApps, there are two types of data source -- Tabular data source (e.g. SP list, SQL Table, etc) & Action data source (e.g. Office 365, Azure, etc). The Dropbox connector is a Tabular data source within PowerApps. When you connect to a Tabular data source from an app, you would be prompted to select a specific table to connect to.

More details about the data source types in PowerApps, please check the following article:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/connections-list

If you want to use the "Get files in folder" action of Dropbox, I think the Microsoft Flow could achieve your needs. You could consider fire a flow from your app, then return proper values from your flow back to your app.

More details about returning data back to an app from a flow, please check and see if the following blogs would help in your scenario:

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/return-data-to-powerapps/

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/return-an-array-from-flow-to-powerapps-response-method/

More detials about firing a flow from an app, please check if the following video would help in your scenario:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wl9AtxWdkg

Best regards,