The "Get files in folder" action works when logged in but not unattended

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Posted on by drake

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Hello,

We have a desktop flow that runs fine when run locally in the dev environment, but that errors out when run unattended on the bot hardware. The account that the flow runs under, while on the bot hardware, has been granted full rights to the network share but we are receiving this error:

Problem while executing action 'GetFiles'. Can't retrieve list of files in folder [the path].

Also, when logging in to the bot hardware, with the account that the flow runs under during the unattended runs, the flow runs without issue.

Any idea what might be causing this? Are there differences between manual runs of a desktop flow and those that occur automatically during unattended runs?

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Power Automate Desktop

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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Most of the time, when trying to use Network Drives unattended, the bot cannot see mapped network drives. Therefore, instead of using N: in the flow, you have to use \\Network\.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

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drake 139 on at

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This helps, but the action is currently not using a mapped drive (it's using \\Network\)

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MichaelAnnis 5,727 Moderator on at

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Here is a manual work around, apparently other people are having the same problem. If CMD can see the drive, this will work:

Short story, it uses command prompt to copy all files to the clipboard (that is the dir/b | clip command), pastes that into Excel, and then reads Excel to save the "ExcelData" as a list. I tried "Get Clipboard Text" but it was just text, and couldn't convert it to a list, so the Excel steps are necessary to get all files as a list.

Best of luck!

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drake 139 on at

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We learned that putting in a wait (5-10 seconds) before the "Get files in folder" action, along with setting this action to retry upon failure, resolved the issue.

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