Get a Row (Excel business) - matching identical value from two excel tables - Now Row found with id.

[Ricardo111]

Hello! I'm very perplexed by this!

Flow works as follows

1 - Manual Trigger

2 - Get a Row (excel): Gets first row of a table that includes a column title 'phone' with a phone number from an excel table (format general)

3 - Get a Row (excel) - different sheet/table to the first.  

Search by:

key column name: Phone

Value: variable from  the 2nd action (phone from the first sheet).

returns: No row was found with Id ...

The data from the 1st action:

{

,

  "phonepda": "�6141111117",

}

The 3rd action returns status 404, id not found.

But the second sheet DOES contain exactly the same phone number. The format of the phone number in BOTH sheets (tables) is formatted as 'general'

I re-ran the flow using email and this worked fine.

But not with the phone number.

[Mira_Ghaly]

@Ricardo111 

There looks like there is a special character in the phone field in the first sheet

[Ricardo111]

Hi Mira, Ah, 

Thank you for pointing out the issue.

I'm trying to find what character has been added ... the excel sheet data does not appear to have anything other than the number (formatted as general).

Any ideas?

I'll report back also if I find the answer!

[Mira_Ghaly]

@Ricardo111 

Trying to use the trim expression on the column.

[Ricardo111]

I tried trim but still get the "?6144444444"

The original variable is sent to the sheet from a power automate desktop.

This variable is the output of a python script.

The variable has one line , is a 'text' string, and has the number ... and also has whitespace removed.

There seems to be some non whitespace characters hidden somewhere on the table.

[Ricardo111]

.... A bit more information might help!

The following is the JSON response for the PA flow that receives the power automate desktop flow. Some variables have ?in them and others do not.

The PAD flow is sent to PA with 'do not encode' selected.

"body": {

        "name": "�Rob",

        "DOB": "14/11/1974",

        "First_Name": "mark",

        "name_second": "�Tester",

        "phone": "�61444444444",

        "NOK": "�Sasha",

        "Photo": "�Yes",

        "emailoutput": "robbtest@hotmail.com",

        "locationoutput": "SESC",

        "googlelink": "https://g.page/r/CQaYadsfadsfasfdAI/review",

        "key": "keasdfasdfadfasdfadsf"

    }

}

[Ricardo111]

I tried decode using compose

still get (I've changed numbers so hope this isn't confusing)

"�6144444444"

[Ricardo111]

ps I did try 'trim' on excel but the ?still appears (but trim only removes whitespace and there isn't any)

[Mira_Ghaly]

@Ricardo111 

Okay in the flow try to remove the first character

[Ricardo111]

Unfortunately this does not work.

Compose with

substring(outputs('Get_a_row')?['body/Phone'],2,10)

I'm totally baffled to be honest it's like there is a bug.

[Mira_Ghaly]

@Ricardo111 

Did you check the history for the value in ? Just try using the below

substring(outputs('Get_a_row')?['body/Phone'],1,10)

[Ricardo111]

Ah yes I did that earlier, the following returns the same number eg 61444444444

substring(outputs('Get_a_row')?['body/Phone'],1,10)

[Ricardo111]

Just taking a step back, see screenshot of:

get a row (excel) ‘raw output’

this data is derived from the first excel table and the ‘Phone’ number used as the key value in the second table.

[Mira_Ghaly]

Can you try to copy the values in the phone column into another column and rename it to be the same, delete original column and try again.

[Ricardo111]

Good Idea I’ll report back tomorrow

[Ricardo111 · Accepted solution]

In the end I switched to using email address as a unique identifer (key).

Thanks for trying to help.

There is a glitch in PA on this issue of cross-checking a 'number'  between one table and a different table in excel, despite identical formatting (whether formatted as a number or general or text).