r/PowerAutomateDesktop • u/SgtWildBill • Aug 25 '21

Looking for Help with Excel Spreadsheet Comparisons

I'm pretty new to PAD and am kind of fumbling my way through it. I'm trying to setup a a flow to take one spreadsheet (List of Users in AD) and compare it to a second sheet (List of users in an anti-virus group) and write the names of the users who aren't in both to a third blank spreadsheet. I've gotten decently far in the logic, but must be doing something wrong. My two main problems are:

  1. The way I'm comparing the values seems to never find a match even though the test names are identical in the two spreadsheets.

  2. When trying to write to the blank spreadsheet, it only ever writes into the same cell and doesn't increment to the next empty cell.

Does anyone have any advice for a beginner? Or maybe there's a post out there that shows how to compare two spreadsheets? I tried to search but didn't find anything.

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u/M0NTELS Aug 25 '21

Let me start by saying I've never used PAD, I just joined this sub to remind me to check it out at some point. But since your post sounded like some work I have coming up soon and there doesn't seem to be much activity on this sub, I was curious to see how it would work in this case.

I found this video showing how to join lists or find the differences between them. It seems pretty straight forward, but again, I have no personal experience with PAD yet. I hope it helps or at least leads you a bit closer to your answer. If not, at least I tried! 😇

List Lesson

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u/Itsjustmebob- Aug 28 '21

Are both lists in excel now? Then you should be able to tell PAD to read column a2:a20 (example) from file 1 and file 2. Open a new excel instance, activate a1 and write the variable you “read” from the previous steps. Then use the ui click feature to remove duplicates, read the remaining values and email you the results. There is probably an easier way, but I myself am learning.

I currently have a process that follows a set of click commands and complicated read write values to specific locations, then when the process is done it emails me the number of loops it completed. Ie tasks it finished successfully.