Excel Scope Activity replaces existing file with empty excel file

Hello,

Not sure if anyone has the same problem but we are seeing more of these bugs/error with the recent package update of excel activity.

From time to time excel scope activity will throw an error and replaces the existing excel log file with Empty data. it’s a major bug as we lost all the logs data and have to check the log message manually for each of the completed transactions to avoid redoing it again.

I can see that we are not the only ones having this issue. this bug/issue goes back since 2018

Excel application scope replaces existing spreadsheet with an empty one - Help - UiPath Community Forum

I also unticked the options of “Create if not exists” options in excel scope to see if that will help but it doesn’t.

@loginerror could you please verify this issue ? Or can anyone help us figure out how to avoid this bug.

Thanks in advanced

did you try untick “auto save” and just add a saveworkbook at the end of the scope?

did that as well together with “Create if not exists". unfortunately, doesn’t help as well :frowning:

@whitestar How do you write the data in an excel. Is it using data table. if that is the case make sure the data table has data. Also, the what is the version of excel activities that you are using

I m using latest stable version of excel activities. .

I am 100% sure it’s the bug just doesn’t happen often (it happens mostly during write cell activity). That’s why looking for a way to avoid this bug.

Hello @whitestar ,

In each execution during the Write Cell activity are you getting this error? Or only sometimes while using Write Cell?

As you mentioned the issue is happening only for some execution is strange. Is it a new workflow recently created or are you facing the issue in the existing workflow after the package upgradation?

it’s not limited only to excel write cell activity I was giving an example.

It’s an existing workflow/new workflow that can happen anytime. it has happened in the past as well. I just didn’t ask here as it happened very rarely.

Hey @whitestar

With those types of bugs, a project that reproduces the issue, even if inconsistently, is much appreciated :slight_smile:
Any chance you could create a share a zip of such a dummy, sample project?

Hi @loginerror ,

thanks, I can share the excel scope workflow file if that can help to find the problem?

That would be helpful, together with a sample Excel file.

Any chance there is something special about the Excel file itself, like some comments in the cells or something similar?

Thanks @loginerror, i contacted directly with technical support to arrange screen share as it’s better to show whole project and error log

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Hello @whitestar ,

I have the same problem. Sometimes the content of the Excel sheet being read is empty when there was data 15 minutes before.

Can you tell me how you solved it please ?

Hi @LESABRU ,

The technical support couldn’t figure out the problem as it was very hard to duplicate the issue.

However, I figured out the issues at least for our case. Can’t promise this will work for your issue.

We save our working excel file in a shared network drive. This problem usually occurred when the bot has to save multiple excel cell values in one workflow or read/write an excel file in very short intervals between each excel scope workflow.

I moved the working excel file from the shared network drive to the Local Drive during the process run time. This solved our issue.

I suspected this was due to network delay and the excel file couldn’t save/close in time.

Hope it helps your case.

Hi Phyomt,

Thanks for your reply and the tip.
Recently, we have indeed encountered network slowdowns.
Even if the context is not the same (we are not writing any data, only reading a configuration file), I will copy the file locally before starting the process.