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Processing multiple pdf files fails, how to handle

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Posted on by jlanigan

I have a desktop flow that is processing a batch of invoices in a folder into excel

I use "Extract text from PDF" to pull the contents into a text file then parse that row by row into a table and into excel.

Functionally it works great, but some of the PDF files fail to extract the text from the PDF. sometimes it's because there is a blank page at the end of the PDF, but sometimes there's no obvious reason. All these invoices are coming from the one accounts package and are the same format so I don't know why it's failing.

Anyway I could live with the failures, I append _failed onto the end of the filename and they can be processed manually.

My problem is that once one PDF fails, they will all fail after that. it's like the "Extract text from PDF" function crashes and then stays crashed. Anyone have a suggestion of how to restart that function? or reccomend a command line tool that works as well as it?

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Power Automate Desktop

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UshaJyothiKasibhotla 225 Moderator on at

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Try to use action level exception
if it contains blank page then continue the flow and go to next action

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jlanigan 8 on at

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The problem is once the action fails once (and throws the exception) it fails for every subsequent PDF file in the folder.

if I remove the first file that fails then it will run for more files until it hits one, then fails again for all subsequent files

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jlanigan 8 on at

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I'm going to try something using XPDF tools to do the pdf to text bit outside of power automate

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UshaJyothiKasibhotla 225 Moderator on at

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or you can use on block error to handle the exception and you can write the rules needed

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UshaJyothiKasibhotla 225 Moderator on at

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if it fails for one files it should go to next file right?
if that is your case then use action level exception

write your condition and select continue flow run and navigate which actions to perform
Hope this helps

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jlanigan 8 on at

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I've done that. the problem is that once "extract text from pdf" fails on one file, it will fail for all subsequent files.

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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Is each report always the same amount of pages (not including the blank page)?

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jlanigan 8 on at

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No they vary from 1-3 pages in length.

I'm seeing ok results using pdftotext from xpdf and it's working but its definitely a slower process iterating through all the files twice.

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