Make Power Automate remember my previous variables even when the flow stops

[yiyi]

Hi community,

Many thanks for your help always.

I don't know if it is just me that has issue with this, but when a flow stops it forgets all its flow variables

so when I restart the flow I have to all start from the very beginning.

Is there a way to make RPA remember its previous flow variables?

[MichaelAnnis]

If you are just trying to test your current flow, I recommend just adding the fixed variable temporarily into the place you want to “run from here”. 

Otherwise, you could “save” the variables to environment variables. You would need to know where the breaks occur and pull these in through something similar to the following example:

if %var1% isempty

    Get env Var %env_var1%
end if

Good luck!

[Agnius]

Power Automate Desktop does not have the possibility of storing variable values between flow runs. If you need to have those values available for your next run, you would need to store them somewhere. One possibility is the Windows environment variables like @MichaelAnnis suggested. Other options include some simple files (like a plain text file or CSV) that are easier to read than your normal input flow, a database, a SharePoint list or something like that.

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[yiyi]

@MichaelAnnis @Agnius 

Thank you for your sugguestion!

Any downside of using windows environment variables.

Can they be overwritten or cleared out when not needed?

[yiyi]

@Agnius 

If I choose to store it into some simple files, what action should I use?

[MichaelAnnis]

If you choose to use environment variables, you simply “set environment variable” when you want to overwrite or “get environment variable” when you want to call it. 

[Agnius]

Environment variables can be set/cleared manually via the System Properties on Windows. I wouldn't really say there are any serious downsides, other than maybe some limitations to what you can store there.

As to simple files, you could simply use Write text to file to write to a txt file or Write to CSV file if you want to store a data table, as storing it in CSV makes more sense.

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[yiyi]

When setting the flow variable to environment variable, I cannot seem to use "for each...in..." with the new environment variable.

Anyways to go around about it?

[Agnius]

It's stored as a text string. Use Split text to split it into a list.

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[jesse535]

OK, but that is a lot of work if you have a dozen or so variables and suddenly your script crashes and you just want to fix the last line with the error. You have to go through a process that may take several minutes just to test one line and then repeat every time until you've debugged it. It would be much, much easier just to run from the line you want while keeping the data already stored.