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2 active excel needed for flow but automate fail to focus on 1 instance

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Posted on by Thunyathorn

So, my flow need excel 1 to get username and password to sign-in to one website then copy infomation from that site into the second excel. Both excel will need to use launch excel to create excel instance cause my flow need to use many function in excel command. It always fail when I tried to focus on blank excel I lauched at the start of the flow outside of loop.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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It's perfectly viable to use several Excel instances in the same flow. You just need to make sure you use different variables to store each instance.

If your flow fails, it likely means you made a mistake somewhere. But it's quite difficult to tell you where with this little details. Can you please share a screenshot of your flow?

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Thunyathorn 12 on at

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So I change instance name to make sure I am not mistaken one for the other (Pic of the whole flow is so long I still working on make it shorter). It didn't work ,picture below show the 1st time I call this instance to focus after launch excel file. Crash and report it can't find this instance.

I'm about to change my method and try to use just 1 excel file and make it go back and forth with other worksheet within that excel file. Hope it work though.

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CU31080729-3 502 Moderator on at

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Hi,
Why are you trying to focus excel after launching it , if you want to read data from specific sheet of excel then
you can use
1) launch excel action
2) set active excel worksheet action for setting your sheet active for specific sheet
3) read from excel worksheet (by using this action you can store your username and password in specific variable )
4) close excel

used above username and password to populated on website

then read data from website store into data variable

1) launch excel action
2) write excel worksheet (data variable used this variable writing into excel)
3) close excel and save

(Note:- if you got your solution you can mark as solution and gives kudos)

Thanks & Regards
Chetan Ninghot

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Thunyathorn 12 on at

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That's not what I want to do in the picture. I already got the username and password from excel1 the go to website, log-in and get data from web. Then in the flow I share above I tried to focus blank excel that I launch before hand to write data from web into this excel then do it again for another user until I get data from all user, save it as file for that day(loop here so I can't launch blank excel in this step).

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Thunyathorn 12 on at

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Guess it's because I tried to focus instance while in loop. I change my flow so it will open just 1 excel then create new worksheet for detail from website, this mean I got to have only 1 loop and still report error cause it can't find this excel window.
Can some one fix this for me? I attach my new flow below.

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DeepaliJagtap 68 on at

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Hi,
You can use focus window action after you launch excel with below properties of corresponding excel instance.

for safer side you can add delay of 2 or 3 sec before focus action. Also make sure that Make instance visible property of launch excel action is ON in order to focus it.

Please mark this as solution if it helps you solve issue. Happy to help you more. 🙂

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Thunyathorn 12 on at

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That is where the error appears (see pic. in that message3 and pic.6 in message 6). And yes I turn Make instance visible ON in all Launch function.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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You do not need to use Focus window or Send keys. There is an entire actions group called "Excel" that has actions like Launch Excel, Attach to running Excel, Read from Excel worksheet , etc.

The problem with your flow is that you're interacting with Excel the way a human would (by navigating via its UI and sending keys to copy values), when all you need to do is use native Excel actions without using the UI.

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If I have answered your question, please mark it as the preferred solution. If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

I also provide paid consultancy and development services using Power Automate. If you're interested, DM me and we can discuss it.

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