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Editing Flows

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Posted on by 3DEcho

Seems like a reasonable thing to edit the PAD Flow in a text editor rather than suffering through recording steps. I can't seem to find my Flow file anywhere, nor can I see a place to just edit the file by hand in the PAD app itself.

I have a bunch of steps, 20 or so, selecting an item in a combo box and hitting an Add button. After making about 5 of these iterations, I see a pattern and would prefer to just create the steps without the "assistance" of the recorder.

What's the magic?

Thanks,

David

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Power Automate Desktop

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Henrik_M 2,021 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Don't count on directly editing the code becoming a thing.

If you're frustrated with the Recorder, which is very understandable, I will suggest adding your UI elements manually, then your actions afterwards.

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VJR 7,635 on at

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I can't seem to find my Flow file anywhere, nor can I see a place to just edit the file by hand in the PAD app itself.

The flow file will not be available to edit anywhere, but people generally do a Ctrl C within the flow editor, Ctrl V in a text editor, make the necessary changes and then Paste it back into the Flow editor and then Save the Flow.

But there could be chances of certain flow steps/elements not showing up or inaccessible in the text editor. So you can test it out in a separate flow if it works for the pattern you have identified.

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ThomasFonn 273 on at

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Hi @3DEcho ,
I'd go with Henriks approach primarily.

To expand on VJRs post a bit, for quick and dirty changes, you can copy/paste it into any text editor.
however, UI-specific actions looks like gibberish in the text editor (see image below), and is not a good fit at all for that.
Gibberish from UI-specific action

There's a way to work with a code editor a bit more efficently, and that is creating syntax highlighting for PADs language "Robin".
I haven't found any syntax highlighting that is open to the masses, but I built my own, which looks like this in Visual Studio:
Code highlighting the Robin Language
While this is possible, I don't suggest going this route unless you plan to spend a lot of time with it.
You can DM me if you want it, but it's really rough and needs plenty of polish

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3DEcho on at

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Hi, Thomas,

Thank you for the input. I was hoping to stay away from large amounts of work. 🙂

I did find that one can use a wildcard for the title bar of the application rather than the complete title. Here are my steps:

1. Edit or create a Flow
2. With the Recorder, click on the title bar of the app
3. Click the Done button in the Recorder
4. Go to the editor window for that Flow and select the UI step you just recorded
5. Select "UI Elements" from the View menu
6. Select the step you recorded on the right. It will contain the window's text
7. Click the . . . button and select Edit
8. Change the Operator for the Name field from "Equal to" to "Contains"
9. Edit the Value field accordingly
Note: The Process field may be helpful if you have multiple apps with the similar Name fields
10. Hit Save to close the dialog
11. Hit the . . . button again and select Rename. Rename your Window value to something fun like "My Favorite App"

Now, when the content of your app's title bar changes, it still gets selected. And you can reuse that UI Element.

I hope that helps others suffering through this.

Cheers,
David

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