Logic Apps getting giberish when extracting from excel

Question

I'm trying to set up a flow that would extract data from excel files and insert into a SQL db in the cloud with properly mapped columns. I have tried multiple ways (get a row, list rows present in a table, get a table) but can't properly extract files. The most recent way I tried returns some gibberish. Anyone done that before or is there a better way to set up the desired pipeline?

Answer 1

That “gibberish” is the binary representation of the file contents you’ve ostensibly gathered from the previous step in your flow (Get file content).

Your error is that you’ve assumed the File argument of List rows present in table takes said binary representation and acts on it. This is not the case (and it’s not clear how you reached this conclusion in the first place); from the documentation for the List rows present in table operation:

Name	Key	Required	Type	Description
[...]
File	file	True	string	Select an Excel file through File Browse.
[...]

While I wouldn't call this documentation abundantly clear, this input is configured to accept the path to the file you're looking to have processed by the Excel Online connector relative to the other Location and Document Library parameters.

To get this to work in totality, you'll have to swap your OneDrive trigger When a file is created, since it only returns the binary content of the file, and instead opt for something like When a file is created (properties only) so you can wrangle its BlobMetadata output to pass to the associated parameters for List rows present in table.