for loop size in desktop flow is doubled up when calling it using cloud flow

[chienhsianghung]

Hi, 

I'm scrapping websites to get stock price according to tickers in Excel.

It's all fine when doing it locally (PAD) while when calling it from the cloud flow (through machine connector), it seems it doubled up the tickers w/ "" so it kept scrapping though it with ticker = "" after the loop went through all real tickers.

I thought the issue happened is because when we open an excel and get first row, the getting_free_row function might have been executed before table has fully loaded in. Therefore I put a wait after launch excel. But the situation is still the same.

And the problem is when calling PAD through cloud flow, we can't see what happened among the process of PAD (ex. variables...). And this double-up issue wouldn't happen when calling it locally. So we will never know what exactly happened inside the process.

If anyone is facing the similar problem or has any insight/solution, please kindly help me addressing this tricky issue.

Thank you in advance,

Hsiang

[tkuehara · Accepted solution]

Hi @chienhsianghung 

The only way I can think of that you could see what happened during you flow execution is to manually add log steps.

Try creating a simple text file and then throughout your code (especially before/after the error/critical steps) write the variables in that text file. This approach saved me a lot of times (it's actually a good practice to do so).

Pro tip: if you have a complex flow with lots of subflows, I also recommend adding the function name, date and time and any other relevant identifier because log files can become extremely large so creating a well organized log file structure from start will definitely help you. You can create separate log files for each day, for example, but ofc those add up complexity to your solution.

[MichaelAnnis]

A problem I ran into with "Get First Free Row" was that the command actually looks at the 1st row after the human version of CTRL + End.  Therefore, anytime I am trying to pull the first row using this command, I use the following Excel Macro to clear all excess off the worksheet first:

Sub Clear_All()
'
' Clear_All Macro
' remove all excess rows and column so bot can count the correct number

'define Last Column
Range("A1").Select
Selection.End(xlToRight).Select
Dim LC As Integer
LC = Selection.Column

'clear everything after last column
Columns(LC + 1).Select
Range(Selection, Selection.End(xlToRight)).Select
Selection.Clear

'define last row
Range("A1").Select
Selection.End(xlDown).Select
Dim LR As Integer
LR = Selection.Row

'clear everything after last row
Rows(LR + 1).Select
Range(Selection, Selection.End(xlDown)).Select
Selection.Clear

'go back to A1 and save to reset End of worksheet
Range("A1").Select
ActiveWorkbook.Save
End Sub

Best of luck!

[yoko2020]

Try use this action instead to determine first free row.