Opening Excel document located on SharePoint using PAD

[pae1]

Hello everyone,

I hope your day is going well. I need to open and work with an Excel file that is located on Sharepoint. To achieve this I synced the Sharepoint folder to my local device and I'm using the local path. However, the issue I experience is that if I make changes on Sharepoint and run my flow right after it the file doesn't reflect the most recent change. When I run it again the changes are reflected. Is it a normal behavior to have sync delay? Is there a better way to work with an Excel document located on Sharepoint using PAD?

Thank you,

[Deenuji · Accepted solution]

@pae1 

I'm not sure about your use case, but have you attempted to utilize the Excel Online (Business) package? This package allows you to open your Excel files directly from sharepoint rather than from a synced folder.

To access these actions or packages, first, establish your Excel connection reference within your solution. Then, create a desktop flow from your solution and utilize the necessary actions from this package.

Thanks,
Deenuji Loganathan
🤖 Automation Evangelist
Deenuji - Follow me on LinkedIn

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[Agnius · Accepted solution]

What you're experiencing is likely related to auto-sync by the OneDrive desktop app.

If you have a Premium account, it makes a lot of sense to use the SharePoint actions in Power Automate Desktop to get the file, make changes to it locally, and then push the file back to SharePoint again. This is a significantly more reliable way of doing it than using the OneDrive desktop app to sync the directory.

If you do not have a Premium license, and have to use the OneDrive app for syncing, I recommend copying the file locally before making the changes, and then moving it back to the synced directory. This is because the auto-sync by OneDrive can also cause issues when saving your changes or writing to Excel in general. I have experienced these issues numerous times. So, use Copy file(s) to copy it locally, then do what you want to do with it, and then use Move file(s) to move it back.