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Compare the current date with an date from an excel field

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hello,

I have a condition in my flow where i check if the current date is later then a date written in an excel field:

utc Now('dd.MM.yyyy') is bigger than the excel field. But it wont work. Do somebody know how to solve? Is it maybe because of the dots in the format?

Because I want to check, if the current date is later, than create an e-mail and inform that person to do his task.

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Rahber 1,935 on at

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Are you using Excel Online or Excel?

In Excel Online the dates are returned as Integers.

You can read about the workaround here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Excel-dates-turned-into-integers/m-p/594719/highlight/true#M78438

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Is there an optin to solve that with excel online, as i used that for my whole big process and it would cost time to change that into the regular excel. Maybe to change the formate with excel online ?

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Rahber 1,935 on at

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Hello,

Can you please show a screenshot from your Flow Previous Run where you are comparing the two fields.

I just want to see what date type is being returned from Excel then i can tell you exact change that needs to be done in Flow.

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ScottShearer 25,290 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@Anonymous

Try formatting the column where your date is stored in Excel as a string/text. You'll need to use formatDateTime on either the date returned from utcNow() or Excel to put them in the same format.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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My flow is an recurrence flow that is supposed to work each day. My flow have the following condition. Sorry its in german but i translate. The condition has to check the current date and look if it is bigger so like (Today is 27.06.2020 and compare that with the excel field 26.06.2020). The excel field is a standard field in excel online. And the flow continue if it is bigger, than send an email. Hope that helps?

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Actually both fields are the same, as i now compare two excel fields. Because in the step before i store the current date in a field and then compare both. But i dont even konw if the condition can handle to look which date is later like 28.06.2020 and 25.06.2020. Is this possible to check?

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Rahber 1,935 on at

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try to do this. Before your compare condition
Initialize two variables string type.
1) First variable should store the utcNow() expression
2) Second variable should store the value from from Excel.
In your compare statement use the variables.
If this still doesnt work. Please go to the run hsitory of the flow and take screenshot of both the variables (in run mode not in edit mode)

I just did a quick test and it works.

Please click Accept as Solution if it resolved your problem or give it a Thumbs Up if it helped you in anyway this will allow other people to search correct solutions effectively.
Thanks,
Rahber

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JacquesOlivier on at

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The Excel Get a Row action now has a DateTime Format input that allows you to specify the way dates are returned from Excel. This would eliminate the need of having to add days to the beginning of time just to be able to compare a date with today.
Returns the date as

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