Template workaround for "When an Excel row is created", "When an Excel row is modified", and/or "When an Excel row is deleted" triggers.
Limitations
• Initially only set up for Excel tables of less than 100,000 records and less than 100MB contents. Version b allows for more than 100,000 records, but still has a 100MB contents limit.
• Each record must be unique. So each record must have a column or combination of columns that is unique & not empty for every single row. In other words, it must include a primary key.
• Every time a new row is added, it must include the primary key column(s) value(s).
• For large tables, the initial set-up may have a 10+ minute delay between the last edits & running whatever actions one adds for the rest of the flow. Version b does include a set-up that is almost twice as fast, but even that will still see a several minute delay after the last edit when the selected Excel file is 10s of thousands of rows.
Example Run
Initial table
Table edits
Flow run for the 50,000 record table
Example email message with HTML tables for each filtered set of records
HTML table styling: https://ryanmaclean365.com/2020/01/29/power-automate-html-table-styling/
Template Flow Import & Set-Up
Go to the bottom of the post, download the zip file, go to the page for your flows, and select the legacy import option
Upload the import, change the connections, & select the import button
Select the Open Flow link & delete the initial placeholder value compose action
Switch to your desktop, create a text file on your desktop, input something that follows a JSON structure, go to save the file, add a .json file extension while changing the Save as type to All files & preferably give the file a name that refers to the target Excel workbook name & table name
Go to the same SharePoint library as your Excel workbook with the Excel table you are creating the flow for & upload the new JSON file. Make sure it is set up in a place where no one else will delete or alter it.
In the list for the SharePoint library select the Add column option, select the Show or hide columns option, then select to show the ID column & Apply the changes. Once the ID column is showing, go to the row with the Excel workbook you are creating this for & copy the file row ID.
Switch back to the flow. Open the 1st trigger action "When an item or file is modified" & choose the site & document library for your Excel file.
Then go to the 3 dots on the 1st trigger action "When an item or file is modified", go to the Settings, select the +Add button under Trigger Conditions, input the ID copied for the file row into the expression & paste the expression into the Trigger Conditions & select the Done button
@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/ID'], InsertIdNumberHere)
Open the 1st Scope of the flow "Only let the flow run if all users stopped editing for a set time", Open the "Get file properties" action, and select the Site address & SharePoint Library Name for your Excel workbook
Then open the "Settings" action & input the name(s) of the column(s) that form a unique key for every row. So the names for the column or combination of columns with values that are unique for every row in the table
Then go to the Scope below that "Read the Excel table and only let the flow run if no edits during read" and in the Excel List rows & Get file properties 2 actions select the Excel Location, Document Library, File, Table, Site Address, & Library Name
If you are using version b, then you will need to input the Excel file & table references in two places:
Then go to the next Scope "Load previous table version copy before updating to the most recent table copy" and in the Get file & Update file actions select the Site Address, File Path, Site Address, & Site Address for the JSON file you loaded into the SharePoint library. This will hold a JSON array copy of the Excel table for the flow runs.
Save & run the flow once so any existing data in your Excel table is recorded in the previous table version JSON file. This will prevent any later actions you add from running for every existing row the 1st time the flow is triggered. By running it once without added actions, it will correctly run your added actions for only the edited rows the 1st time it is triggered later.
That is all the set-up for the template that will run whenever anything in the Excel workbook is modified and that will output different sets (arrays) of the Created records, Modified records & Deleted records. From here you can use the example Apply to each loops & example compose action inputs to set up what actions you want the flow to run for newly created records, for modified records, and/or for deleted records. In the example Apply to each loops the From field is filled with the array Body of the appropriate filter array action for the Created, Modified, or Deleted records and within the loop you can reference any of the record column values with the provided expression by inputting your chosen Apply to each loop name & inputting your chosen column name.
items('Insert_Loop_Name_Here')?['InsertColumnNameHere']
Also if you do not plan to ever use one of the Created, Modified, or Deleted outputs, then you can delete both the filter array action for those records & the associated Apply to each loop
And if you only want the flow actions to run when changes are made to specific columns, you can set the Excel List rows table read to only Select the primary key column & those specific columns to check for changes as described here.
Version B:
Version B replaces the single 100,000 pagination Excel List rows connector with a bit more complicated set-up that determines a rough approximation of the total rows in the table, then loads several 5000 row batches from the table with concurrency/in parallel and then combines all those 5000 row batches into a single JSON array output similar to the output of the standard 100,000 pagination Excel list rows connector.
Reasons to use Version B:
If you need a faster flow with less time between the last Excel table edits & the triggering of flow actions for those edits.
If you want to use this on an Excel table with more than 100,000 rows that is still below 100MB total content.
If you have a lower level Microsoft / Office365 license and only have a maximum pagination / Excel connector load of 5000.
If you have any trouble importing through the standard import method, see this post to import through a solution package.
Thanks for any feedback,
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Hello,
Thanks for your great work.
When I edit an Excel file, all the content within the Excel file will be exported to a JSON file, rather than just the information about "created," "modified," or "deleted." Is this correct?
I followed your instructions to create an Excel script for converting tables to JSON, and everything runs fine. However, the script converts everything in the Excel file to JSON. Therefore, if the Excel file has around 4000 rows, the resulting JSON file will be quite large because it exports everything in the Excel sheet. Could you help me address this issue?
Also, how can I send an email similar to what you showed, but only containing information about "created," "modified," or "deleted"? If I create an email-sending action, where should I place it within the flow?
Thanks for your support.
