Refreshing Excel links in a Powerpoint presentation

Hi all,

I have a process which uses SmartView to refresh an Excel file (which it somewhat reliably does when SV isn’t being childish) and then opens a Powerpoint which has tables/graphs linked to the numbers in the Excel.

When done by the user, they receive a pop up asking to update links and when clicking yes the process is done in 30 seconds or so (slightly quicker if leaving Excel open), but when the bot runs it it often times out after 30 minutes trying to update links. Has anyone come across something similar before?

Thanks

Did you try to increase the timeout, or the exception that comes out is selector not found?

The selector is fine, it clicks “Update Links”, it just times out waiting for it to update the links (after 30 minutes - should only take about 30 seconds), sorry, should have been clearer :slight_smile:

but after the 30 minutes, does it really work or maybe it doesn’t error out but never clicked that link?

The pop up box disappears and the “updating links” notice slider bar thing at the bottom of the PPT window starts to fill up, so I’d think it’s been pressed?

since i never used this feature i am not sure, but then we would have to assume that when the robot clicks it takes 30 minutes and when a person does it takes 30 seconds to do the same action?

Yeah, but…why? All the robot does is click the same button a human would?

i am not familiar with those actions, but if you really cant wait that 30 minutes in your process, try to automate that click more in the same way a human does, maybe opening the applications themselves…

Hello, how are you?
I have a process that uses the same mechanisms you are saying, updating links manually, that is, clicking on update links when opening PowerPoint, saving and closing the file. Try to explore Power Point shortcuts and always keep your Excel spreadsheet open.

2 Likes

So we tried keeping Excel open, but when we did that the tool which pulls the numbers into Excel (called SmartView, an Oracle product), causes a conflict meaning nothing at all happens, so we now have to close it sadly.

It is currently being done as a person would, clicking the “Update Links” button, and it’s unattended and running on a VM with lots of other processes so can’t have it always open, or have them open it really. Also, we “could” wait 30+ minutes for it to run as it runs at 9pm after hours, but the question is more “why when a bot clicks update does it take 30+ mins, but when a person does 30 seconds”? Could it be that UiPath is clogging up CPU/RAM to the extent that the VM slows that much?