PAD Flow Disappeared

[pjwilson1987]

One of my PAD Flows just disappeared on me.

It was about 50 subflows with about 100 actions each.

I am using a personal free account.

My PAD is already updated to the latest version.

I did not delete the flow.

Is there any way to recover it?

[Ankesh_49]

Try login to PAD with your email and it should show up

[pjwilson1987]

@Ankesh_49 

I tried logging out and then logging in with my email and it is still not showing my flow.

[Ankesh_49]

Try searching it PAD console and see if you can locate it.

Or if you can access power automate cloud, goto desktop flows tab and see if you can locate it. As the flows automatically gets saved to Microsoft account login I guess

[pjwilson1987]

I found a file in my OneDrive folder that looks like it was last updated today (which is when I was using it last):

When I opened the file in NotePad though, it's just a huge file of letters and numbers:

Does anyone know if this file has anything that can help me recover my lost PAD flow?

[Ankesh_49]

@pjwilson1987  Great news!! However, I thought you had already tried it.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/getting-started-msa

Anyways. All's well that ends well.

Hope it helps!!

Cheers,

Ankesh

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[pjwilson1987]

Looks like my flows do not get automatically saved in PAD Cloud.

Probably because it's a free account.

And I was unable to locate using the PAD console.

[pjwilson1987]

How do I open this back up file of my flow in PAD?

[XRQ57]

Hi,

trie to copy paste the data in Notepad to your flow.

This is how i am sharing my flows.

This is a good way to save them too.

[pjwilson1987]

Thanks @XRQ57. I am aware of the copy/paste from Notepad.

This back up file in OneDrive does not work like that though so I was wondering why does PAD automatically save a back up file in my personal OneDrive (because I am using my Microsoft account) if you cannot do anything with the file.

[VJR]

PAD saves those files for "its" internal purpose and not for opening in the PAD editor. 

Right now the model of sharing/re-using PAD flows is via the Cloud Flows.

[pjwilson1987]

@VJR 

Thanks for responding.

My PAD Flow file disappeared in my PAD editor (it seemed to just crash while I was in the middle of working in the Flow), but the file seems to still appear in my personal OneDrive folder which is weird.

[Simon_Luo]

Hi there, is this solved ? I just met the same problem this morning...

[pjwilson1987]

@Simon_Luo No, I never found a way to get it back. Unfortunately, I had to begin re-creating my flow and each subflow within it. The only option is to make sure you copy and paste your flow/subflows in notepad file(s) for backup in case these scenarios happen.

[kostasc · Accepted solution]

Hey, 

There are two files stored in OneDrive per flow:

One that holds the actual flow and it's just a guid and the other is guid.meta and holds some meta data about the flow, including it's name. Each flow is assigned a ctag by OneDrive that changes everytime the flow changes. We store that ctag in the meta file and then we compare that to the actual ctag of the flow when we perform the GET api call to list them. If the flow's ctag has changed outside PAD, the .meta file won't be updated and in this case PAD will consider that flow corrupted and won't be listed it in the console.

You can try the following:

1. Launch and sign-in to PAD

2. Open your favourite network trace tool (fiddler, wireshark etc) and start capturing

3. Click to refresh your flows from PAD's console

4. Go to your network tracing tool and search for the call: https://graph.microsoft.com//v1.0/me/drive/special/approot/children 

5. Click on it and check it's response. Under the 'value' property of the response Json, there are multiple '{}' objects. These are your flows. When you open one of them, there is a 'name' property. You need to find the '{}' object that it's name value matches the guid (you see that in your OneDrive) of your flow. 

6. Once you find the correct object, search for the 'ctag' property and copy that.

7. Go to your OneDrive, open the <guid.meta> file and download it. 

8. Open the downloaded file, copy the base64 encoded string and head to a base64 online decoder and decode it. You will see a Json with this format: 

{"id":"89e93e25-ad7d-4155-a924-fdc85426fb64","name":"Name of Flow","projectCTag":"aYz6zaTdB4jNCOEF3NDY2rUFCI5Ew8zAuMjU1"}

9. Replace the "projectCTag" value with the value that you found from step #6 and encode the new string.

10. Copy the encoded string to the file you downloaded from step #7 and upload / replace it in your OneDrive.

11. Refresh the flows list in PAD's console.

Hope this helps.

[eglusaxie]

I can't believe I made it. Your solution is really amazing😚.

[TheAnker]

Thank you a lot for this solution!

[Nadcmoi]

Thank you SOOOOOOO much. You just saved me 2 days of work. Please let me know how I can show my gratitude.

[hdhanh]

Hi @kostasc 

It's worked. Thank you alot

[Vipul]

I can't find https://graph.microsoft.com//v1.0/me/drive/special/approot/children. What I see instead is "graph.microsoft.com:443" instead. And it does not have cTag. What might be the problem? I have logged out and logged in multiple times from Power Automate before I found this solution. Has it anything to do with that? I have lost 40 large flows. Any help is so much appreciated. Thanks in advance.