Flow failing - extracting text from Html to text function.

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by pickledash

Hi All

I am having an issue with a flow where I am using a condition where it looks for a phrase in the email body and then uses an HTML to text action and then extracts lines from the email body.

The issue I run into is sometimes the flow fails on a particular extraction step. I can't seem to distinguish between when the flow fails and when the flow is successful which is the worrying part. As a fairly novice user of power automate can anyone point me in the right direction as to why this flow seems to be sporadically failing. For example the same bit of information ie the same fee earner can submit this email and one will fail and one will be ok.

If anyone can help I can provide more details where necessary.

Here is a screenshot of the flow.

Here is the error it brings back when it fails.

Here is the input for the Extract fee earner step.

This is what the body of the email looks like. Just redacted some of the data that's been input.

Categories:

General topics

I have the same question (0)

All responses (3)

Answers (0)

Suggested answer

Michael E. Gernaey 53,442 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report

HI

here is my recommendation.

1) go in and add a Compose Action above your extra action

in there put in your Html to Text output, so that we can see what it believes it is

2) then re-submit one that failed so that we get the information

3) re-run a successful one

Now we have the Compose populated for both a failed and successful one.

Now we can look at the data itself and see why it's doing that.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
pickledash 17 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi FLMike many thanks for taking the time to reply.

I have done your suggestion and then when I rerun the failed flows they are now all succeeding! So I can't show you the data when it fails as it runs sucessfully when I've just reran 5 failed flows.

From memory I recall this happening previously, when I'd rerun a flow it would then run fine which makes the error even more confusing.

I will keep an eye on it today and if any fail from a real life user I will take a look in the compose action.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
pickledash 17 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @FLMike

I've tested the fail where it's failed. See screenshots below

It's failed at the 'Extract fee earner' action where it's usually been failing.

The output for the extract fee earner is blank (see screenshot below).

However the output for the action below on 'Extract additional information' is half of the email. (see screenshot below).

Here is the substring code for the 'additional information' extraction action:

However the compose step i've added after the HTML to text shows the data in full of the email and everything is there as it should be.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No