Robot stalls while attempting Refresh Excel Data Connections activity

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Hi, everyone.

I built a process that uses the Refresh Excel Data Connections activity. This activity works on my laptop that runs on Windows 11 Pro. However, this activity stalls out and is never completed on my VDI that runs on Windows 10 Enterprise. Any tips for getting this activity to work?

My other thought is to use the GUI to click the Refresh button, but I really don’t want to do that.

Thanks.

2

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3

I’m currently unable to see if this activity will work from Orchestrator. Anyone out there have an idea for how to get the data connections in the Excel to refresh? Is opening the workbook and having the robot click the button my best alternative at this point?

4

Hi Joe,

I had a similar issue both on local and Orchestrator when sending hotkeys to refresh (this bot is a few years old and I wasn’t aware of any specific activity at the time). I can’t say for certain, but I think that the CPU simply can’t handle both the refresh and UiPath constantly checking to see when the process has refreshed. My Excels would crash/bot would fail every time.

I got round this by putting a delay snippet in after the refresh of a minute. I think this essentially pauses the bot which allows Excel to refresh “in peace” and is therefore able to complete easily.

This is also hardly ideal, but it’s worked without fail since, even if it adds unnecessary time to each transaction.

Hope this helps, cheers

5

Thanks for the idea, Alex. I put a 1-minute Delay after the Refresh Excel Data Connections activity, but that did not work. I upped it to 2 minutes, still nothing. I will keep this idea in mind if I encounter a situation similar to yours in the future, though. Thanks.

6

I tried to separate this step from the rest of the steps in Excel. I used a Use App/Browser activity, and set it up for the robot to click the “Refresh All” button to refresh the data connections. However, when the robot opens the file in Excel, none of the buttons in the ribbon are present to click!

Screenshot 2022-09-19 101700
Screenshot 2022-09-19 101700924×115 3.2 KB

Any idea why this would be the case?

7

I think I may have found the issue. Would the Refresh Excel Data Connections activity not work because of this below?

Screenshot 2022-09-19 103951

8

Correct. I just completed a very similar automation, and I had to have it click the Enable Content button. FYI using Check App State to look for the refreshing message at the bottom left of the Excel window to disappear, worked well.

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Thanks for the confirmation. I added the various Click activities that I needed to, but now Excel fails to respond after the Refresh… I just get “Not Responding,” and eventually have to restart Excel. Of course, nothing has been saved at that point, so the Refresh effectively did not occur. Fun stuff. :upside_down_face:

10

All right, everyone. Figured this out.

I ended up having to open up the Connections (under the Data tab) and individually Refresh the first 2 connections on the list. Then, I closed the Connections, clicked “Refresh All,” and no stalling. I could save the file, and the rest of the process ran as expected. Not sure why that was the case, but super happy to have it resolved.

Thanks again to @Alex_Cross and @postwick for your help.

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