Extremely slow flow editor?

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Posted on by Usernametwice

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Hi community,

I am having an issue with a Flow that is moderately complex with many conditions and actions.

The Flow itself runs fine, but editing is where the issues arise. It takes about 5-10 minutes for the Flow to actually load for me to edit now and I keep getting 'Page unresponsive' messages while it loads. Creating a new action freezes the entire page or takes at least 1 minute to finish loading... Everything is slow and It's getting to the point where just making a simple edit/change can be a 1 hour ordeal.

It doesnt seem to be a PC related issue, as my RAM/CPU seem to be in the normal ranges monitoring while I edit the flow.

Does anyone else experience this for larger/more complex flows? I mean, it really isnt that complex compared to other development I've done, so Im sorta surprised Power Automate is struggling with something a little more involved... I've researched solutions, but people mostly say to create child flows, which really isnt something I want to do as I would need to rethink the entire structure of what I've built already.

Thanks all.

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Building flows

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Expiscornovus 33,189 Most Valuable Professional on at

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No, even with complex flows my experience is that it should still load in a decent amount of time. I haven't experience 5-10 minutes loading time.

Out of interest, which version of the designer are you using? The new one or the old one? And how many actions, conditions are you using?

The newest version should normally be a bit quicker. However, if one of them doesn't respond well, you can always try and switch to see if that makes the experience a bit better?

You can add the &v3=false or &v3=true to the end of your flow uri.

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Usernametwice 503 on at

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@Expiscornovus

Thanks for responding.

I have about 370-380 actions inside this flow with 33 conditions.

I am using the new designer and have tried switching back to the old version and I still get the same slowness. Also tried different computers and still the same.

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Curious_Jeff 10 on at

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Thank you for posting your issue as I'm struggling with nearly the same experience. It's very frustrating! And obviously a very long-term problem that has never been solved by Microsoft.

I have a TON of subflows as I like for a subflow to fit all in one screen displayed on my monitor, typically in portrait mode (like viewing a letter, etc.) When I run the flows, I don't like the paging aspect and I can more easily perceive what's happening when there's no scrolling. Of course, during execution, the Actions tab goes away, but the Variables tab takes up a lot of space on the right, and MUCH worse in the new version, 2.62.00161.25297 (downloaded to my machine on 11/07/25).

Don't get me started on the HORRIBLE changes they've made for seemingly NO reason or benefit in 25297 compared to the prior one. I HATE the display of the Variable panel, especially! Sigh. Soapbox for another post, I guess. ;-)

As to THIS issue in particular, after executing a test run, I NEVER edit ANYTHING until I first end the Editor, go back to the main window listing all the flows, and reopen it from scratch, all BEFORE making almost any changes, if ever at all.

I get the Editor window title bar at the top flipping from blue to white, seemingly FOREVER, growing progressively with however many lines of code I change after running the flow and before I exit and restart the Editor. I've learned to watch for the signs and am frantically beware because the Angel of Death inevitably cometh quickly! It happens all the time! And really, really sucks! :-(((

I commented somewhere, which I now can't remember, but never heard back. I was hoping the new version might have fixed it. Sadly, the Editor got MUCH worse in other ways, but no progress in fixing this issue.

Power Automate Desktop "About" screen details from "copy details" button:
Version: 11.2511.161.0 ("Version: 2.62.00161.25297" displayed on About screen itself)
Component: Console
Client ID: mQdQiNW9NExR3DWirfLDBl6hy6swQgHt
Session ID: 394fea92-1c9e-4d1b-ba0a-8da87df01a5e
Correlation ID: ed752c81-a315-4e98-beed-3f78c075ac23

Above the copy button, it says Microsoft Store version "11.2511.161.0" with "Version:" of "2.62.00161.25297".

I have Windows 11, 64GB RAM, Intel i9 (about two years old), moderately fast SSD on C: and super-fast SSD 2GB Samsung that supposedly is lightning fast.

(Amazon: SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 2TB NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4, M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Hard Drive, Seq. Read Speeds Up to 7,450 MB/s for High End Computing, Gaming, and Heavy Duty Workstations, MZ-V9P2T0B/AM)

I do my best to stay state-of-the-art in speed, etc. and welcome any suggestions. I spend WAY more time waiting on my computer than vice versa, which is a huge shame in this day and age.

Sorry for the long note. "Bad" habit, but I believe more detail creates less back-and-forth messaging, so please forgive my lack of brevity.

@Expiscornovus, thanks for your reply to the OP, but I don't know what this means:
"You can add the &v3=false or &v3=true to the end of your flow uri."

Dennis, pray tell, what does Expiscornovus mean? I'm very grateful for your reply to the OP, so thank you! Those of us struggling with tech issues appreciate your expertise and courtesy of your reply. Many thanks.

I just signed up for Anders Jensen's tutorial package VIP or robust training package. I like his Dutch accent, and he's very detailed in his demo videos on YouTube. I suspect Dennis and Anders know each other since it's bound to be a small world of you experts in The Netherlands. (I have fond memories of my law school studies in Amsterdam, circa 1995. The Dutch are wonderfully nice people! I even got to ride on a boat in the Gay Pride parade through the canals... what a fantastic experience!)

Kudos to Anders for posting a lot of videos for free, being so nicely thorough, and making his training packages VERY reasonable. I don't mean this to be anything but an expression of my gratitude. If anyone has other recommendations, including Expiscornovus's website in the moments to follow this note, I'd love to hear them.

With about 1 year of spending WAY too much time in Power Automate instead of getting my "real work" done, I'm grateful for all those who share their knowledge here and elsewhere, so THANK YOU!

I'd be grateful for any thoughts on how to overcome this huge issue noted by the OP and me. I typed this entire message while Automate Editor has succumbed to the Automate's Angel of Death... constantly cycling between blue and white window header with "Not Responding" message turning my stomach every single time I look at it. It's probably been doing that for close to an hour, so it's time to kill Power Automate and lose ALL my changes... again. Save often! Sigh.

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eliotcole 4,363 Moderator on at

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Well, @Usernametwice and @Curious_Jeff, can I advise looking at maybe one thing which which makes life rather painful in either version of the designer?

Check for HUGE data in a given action.

So ... If you've got hundreds of lines in one of the input fields of an action then it is quite likely to give the javascript functions which power a lot of what you see a *terrible* time. Similarly, if you have many actions with over a hundred or more lines of input ... again, this will cause issues.

All of this then gives the browser a hard time, because ... most of that processing will be done locally.

Finally, @Usernametwice, I'd say that with over 300 actions, that may well be your cause. I'd recommend trying this:

One New Solution - Create a Solution (read up on them on Microsoft Learn ... I don't have the link to hand) SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS FLOW (don't name it the same, but, y'know the flow's purpose)

Break It All Down - Break the flow up into constituent parts and save each as a new flow in that same solution

Call On The Kids - Use the newly available ability to call child flows to get certain things done (and perhaps introduce some more efficiency into your logic?)

Doing this will allow you to look at loops where you could parameterise and repeat and perhaps just call 'parts of the flow' separately :-)

Similarly, analyse your existing flow ANYway and look specifically at any loops in there. If you can learn a bit more about the Select action, you can SERIOUSLY cut out *so much* looping, and SO many actions that you will be amazed at. If you take that learning a stage further (and I'm no HUGE whizz at this) and utilise the xpath() functionality, you will become a god amongst the low-coders in resident, here!

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David_MA 12,966 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I have not experienced the issue you describe either. However, when you state, "with many conditions and actions", how many conditions and actions do you actually have in your flow? Microsoft recommends using several flows for a process to have one flow handle a specific function of a process. I wish there was something better than this, but here is one resource: Separate flows into smaller automated processes in a Power Automate project - Power Automate | Microsoft Learn.

I have one process that uses 27 flows. This greatly removes complexity and allows you to more easily make incremental improvements. To successfully build multi-flow processes though, you need to understand trigger conditions. If you don't know what a trigger condition, here is one reference to get you started: Understanding Trigger Conditions in Power Automate: A Complete Guide

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Curious_Jeff 10 on at

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@EliotCole and @David_MA,

First, thank you SO much for your responses! Can't say that I understand it all or what to do, but I wanted to clarify one major point...

The issue I raised was purely concerning editing the code inside the Editor after first testing the code, even once. The problem is NOT a runtime issue, but purely editing of the code after it's been tested at least once. It's only then that my issue arises... Editing the code that just got executed without first exiting the Editor and restarting the Editor from scratch.

Execution is always fine; Editing the code after execution becomes deadly within a few edits (often less than 10 lines.)

Does that make sense? The execution of the code is slick as a whistle. Editing without first exiting the Editor and restarting the Editor from the main list in the Flows tab is a recipe for disaster within a few edits. I sometimes forget and it's a very painful "mistake".

I'd still love to learn more about segmenting large sections of the code into completely different flows rather than just another subflow of the one flow saved in the flow manager thing. Sorry that I sound so naive, but coding has changed a LOT since my COBOL programming days on IBM 370 mainframes in the Eighties. Sigh. Not to worry, you'll eventually get old, too. ;-)

If I understand the two responses correctly, it's addressing performance of executing the code inside the Editor, which is not at all an issue for me. It's the editing one tries to do after the test run that's deadly.

Nonetheless, my gratitude for your responses is very sincere, and I appreciate your time. And if I misperceived the responses and it's actually about the editing process, I apologize for not catching your drift. Sigh.

(Question: Is my bolding of the keywords helpful or disrespectful? It's certain not my intention, of course! I'm hoping it helps identify the key items of concern to a reader just skimming the text. My lack of brevity often gets me into trouble.)

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eliotcole 4,363 Moderator on at

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My emboldened question and basically the first 54 lines / paragraphs are addressing this, @Curious_Jeff.

The issue I raised was purely concerning editing the code inside the Editor after first testing the code, even once.

Execution is always fine; Editing the code after execution becomes deadly within a few edits (often less than 10 lines.)

There is going to be something giving the 'client' what runs the designer a hard time.

Identify that, you'll fix it.

I did this very thing on Thursday, where (for convenience) I had ~1400 lines of array (which I should've minimised - but it would've been the same) in either a 'Select' or 'Parse JSON' action to process. I was basically unable to use the editor. However, after shifting that to a OD/SP folder (it's easier to use the SharePoint connector), and loading from there, I actually had a usable interface.

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