Override file lock sharepoint for deletion

[Anonymous]

So, I'm create a temporary file in sharepoint, to extract the rows and put them in a sharepoint list.

on new item in list
1. Grab the attachment from item
2. Save it to sharepoint

3. Get rows from Excel on the sharepoint file
4. Shove them in another list
5. Delete the temporary file

Issue is, I think the api calls to Excel Online lock the file (by me) but I've got no way to release that lock.
I've tried checking in the file, checking it out, nothing works, and I'm left with the temporary file being stored on there, until I go in and manually override the lock.

Is there a way to override/bypass a lock within powerautomate ?
An approach I saw was to put the delete in block in a while loop, wait 2 min, try, if fail try again, until it works, but that feels slow and kludgy.

The powerflow is the only instance of this file being used. It's where it's born, where it performs, and where it dies. Except it won't die 😞

[Anonymous]

In case someone's doing a similar thing, I've ended up adding a timestamp to the file name, so I don't have flows fail because of duplicate names.

I'll see if I find a better way out of this..

[v-jefferni]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Nice thought!

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

I mean,

It means my flows don't break, but I still can't seem to delete the files from power automate. I'd rather the files got deleted properly, so I don't end up with a GDPR nightmare down the line because of something in those files

[v-jefferni · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Modifying in an Excel table will lock the file for about 6 minutes, you can add a Delay action to delete the file 6 minutes later.

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

Ah, that's great to know!

Thanks 🙂