Using PAD I need to open an Excel file that is stored on SharePoint

[PentaGalDad77]

In my PAD flow, I need to open an Excel file that is stored on SharePoint. Using the standard "Launch Excel" action in PAD, I can't come up with a document path that works. I have tried navigating to the Excel file in SharePoint, opening the file in my desktop app, copying the path form the File/Info screen (taking out the ?web=1 part)... but the "Launch Excel" action doesn't seem to like it. Suggestions??? 

[fraenK · Accepted solution]

You have multiple options:

• Sync the Sharepoint library to your PC and use the local path
• Automate Excel to open a pinned document
• Launch a browser and use a specific URL to open the document in your desktop application https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/office-uri-schemes
• Use cloud flows for handling Excel files

[PentaGalDad77]

Thanks for the response. Good list of options. My thoughts/experiences with each:

• Sync with SharePoint & use local file path - this is actually what I am doing today, but am having some issues. I run PAD in unattended mode which means the PC must remain in a "logged off" state and thus not syncing files. Sometimes when it fires up it reads the locally synced Excel file before it has had a chance to fully sync. I have modified the PAD flow, inserting a Wait step before opening the Excel file. This has helped, but when there are many files to sync it sometimes still reads the local file to early. Would be nice if PAD was SharePoint/OneDrive sync aware and thus could "wait" until all files are synced... but I don't think this is an option. Hence my desire to read the Excel file from SharePoint instead of the locally synced copy.
• Automate Excel to open a pinned document - i think this method could work. Not ideal as I have this problem in many flows, but might be my best option. I will explore it.
• use URI Scheme to open Excel from browser - this was new to me. Did not know this was possible. Not sure how this would work in PAD as it seams PAD would not know the instance ID of the Excel session but guess it is worth investigating.
• Use Cloud Flow instead - for my scenario this may work. I could read the Excel contents in a cloud flow and pass the info to PAD. More work than I wanted, but viable.

Again I really appreciate you sharing these options.

[fraenK]

Sync: After login you can open OneDrive and check/loop until the "completely synced" status message appears

URI Scheme: Right, then this might not work

Cloud Flow: Why do you want to still use PAD? Cloud flows is much more powerful with Excel

[PentaGalDad77]

Sync: might work. More effort than I hoped.

Cloud Flow: overall goal is to suck data from a particular cloud service that does not have an API. Only means of pulling data is via their Excel Add-In. PAD does this very well except for a few quirky issues like the one I raise here... 

[PentaGalDad77 · Accepted solution]

Finally found a solution. Kudos to John_A at this Q&A. 

In PAD, to read an Excel file stored in SharePoint or OneDrive, figure out the path as described in the original question... but since PAD is sensitive to percent signs... escape any percent signs in the path with an additional percent sign. Problem solved.

So many little things to learn... sigh... 

[cnjahu]

Adding to this old thread for future users: 

The accepted solution (a leading % to escape the metacharacter) still works in PAD.

It appears that another option for escaping metacharacters is to enclose the desired literal in double quotes. Example from my use: Launch Excel action, with the path as: https://<<server>>/sites/SiteName/Shared''%''Documents/rest_of_path