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Approval could not succeed for excel files but okay for ppt and pdf and txt files.

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Posted on by VswaldB

Hi,

My approval flow works fine for ppt and pdf and txt files, but when I add the excel file, the flow could not start approval flow, why is that? does any one know?

thanks.

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Bhartendu B Pandey on at

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Re: Approval could not succeed for excel files but okay for ppt and pdf and txt files.

Hello @VswaldB .
Thank you for sharing all the information. i tried locating the flow information based on your tenant Id however I was not able to get any details. I also had a look through our internal notes at Microsoft support and I could not see any reported issues with such a behavior . This would also explain why the flow works sometimes when other users add the excel files or share the files with you and then you add the files.

I suggest doing the below.

1. Ask any other user in the organization to add excel file from their machine and check .If you have multiple users I would suggest trying with multiple users .
2.If it works for other users and does not for you , Then Maybe you can login with your user credentials on a working machine and then try executing the flow by adding the excel doc to the SharePoint list . This would absolutely isolate the issue to be related to be machine specific.
3. Do a comparative analysis with respect to the office versions excel versions , addins with a working account and a non working account
4.Also can we check saving the same excel sheet on your machine with maybe different extensions
.xls - 97–2003 format excel file
.xlsx - Excel workbook (anything over 2003 format)
.xlsm - Macro enabled Excel workbook
.xlt - 97–2003 Format Excel Template
.xltx - Excel Template
.xltm - Macro Enabled Excel Template

Also I would request you to try saving a .csv file and check the behavior.

Also we may want to disable any antivirus on your machine during this testing being performed to ensure we do not have any blocking caused due to it.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Please let me know if you have any other questions around the above. Please mark my answer as verified if you found it helpful.

Bhartendu Pandey
Dynamics CRM support Engineer - Customer Engagement/PowerApps/PowerAutomate
Microsoft
VswaldB 24 on at

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Re: Approval could not succeed for excel files but okay for ppt and pdf and txt files.

Hi，

thanks for your reply.

Most of the time, if I add excel files, the flow will run timed out. please see below.

Flow Run Timed Out

but when I upload pdf files, the flow could run successfully within very short time.

and just now, I uploaded successfully a xls file that was created by other people. and I saved it to my desktop and changed to xlsx file, and used it in the flow, it also worked. but if I upload one of my own excel file, and if I directly create one in sharepoint folder, it will go back to running for a long time...and I could see the approval request in my Flow Action list, but no email will be generated. I don't know if this have anything to do with my excel add-ins....

"tenantId": "ecaa386b-c8df-4ce0-ad01-740cbdb5ba55"

Please see my flow step by step below. thanks.

many thanks in advance!
Bhartendu B Pandey on at

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Re: Approval could not succeed for excel files but okay for ppt and pdf and txt files.

Hello @VswaldB .

Thank you for reaching out to us. I wanted to confirm if we see any error messages when you try to run the flow. Can you please share the flow URLS , screenshots for your flow , Tenant id for your flow . Please provide the details and I will research based on the information shared.

Bhartendu Pandey
Dynamics CRM support Engineer - Customer Engagement/PowerApps/PowerAutomate
Microsoft