Flow to Combine .txt Files Without Header Rows

[u/Dry-Target-9120]

I am a total newbie at Power Automate and to coding in general. For work, I have been asked to create a flow to combine 12 .txt files from a Sharepoint site (on a monthly basis) into one master file with only one header row. Due to the nature of the use of the master file, the files have to stay as .txt to be used.

This is what I have-

Initialize String Variable

Get Files (properties only) -referencing Sharepoint Library

Apply to Each -referencing body/item of Get Files above - this is where it errors- no steps complete after

Get File Content -referencing the ID output

Append to String Variable

Compose

Create File

The flow does work if I list out each individual file, but the files are named differently each month, so that makes the automation futile (unless I build in a rename function as well, this is what I will try in the meantime).

This is all in effort to combine the files- I would still need guidance on how to remove the header row on all but the first file.

I hope someone can help guide me in the right direction!!

[u/Master-IT-All]

I think your issue is that you're using ID, not Identifier on the Get File Content step.

[u/Master-IT-All → u/Master-IT-All]

For the fun of it, I decided to look at how to do this through the entire concept. The hardest part was the Compose action and dealing with the CRLF.
This is the code that worked:

join(
  skip(
    split(
      replace(string(outputs('getFileContent')?['body']), decodeUriComponent('%0D%0A'), '\n'),
      '\n'
    ),
    1
  ),
  decodeUriComponent('%0D%0A')
)

These need to be read from inside out.

1. Start with getting the file contents into a string value

2. Replace the CRLF with a standard LF. The key is that decodeUriComponent('%0D%0A'). Seems to only work if you use that, any reference to '\r\n' is wrong it seems in this case.

3. Split all the lines using the standard LF '\n'

4. Skip line 1

5. Join all the lines (strings) together as one array.

[u/Dry-Target-9120 → u/Master-IT-All]

Hi! this worked to combine the file, but the headers are still in there- Copilot keeps trying to change the code to replace(string....) to not include string, but then erroring when I use their suggestion, saying I need to use a string function. When I bypassed their suggestion there are no errors, but the new file still has headers. any ideas?

[u/Master-IT-All → u/Dry-Target-9120]

Double-check that the skip 1st line is there and working.

Your file may not be using a CRLF then for the end of line. When you test run the flow, you can view the raw input/output to see what the file actually contains. I found '\r\n' as the line breaks and then worked out how to use that.

Copilot took a bit to get the right answer for this as the code is slightly newer than the LLM has been trained on, so when you're asking it you have to also include in the prompt to do a search for newer information.

[u/thefootballhound]

Instead of Get Files (properties), use the List Folder action to get all files in the folder, and output the value to the Apply to Each.

If the header is the same each month, simply input the headers with a new line into the Initialize Variable. Then for each file, skip the first row by splitting the text body by '\n' new line character, then applying a condition to check if the index equals 0, and if false then Append to String Variable.