I use PowerAutomate (Cloud, not Desktop) to read an email in Outlook.com and write a value to an Excel spreadsheet in OneDrive. This setup worked fine for months, but in mid-December, it started failing.
Through troubleshooting, I found that it will now only run if I have the spreadsheet open on my PC. If it's open when the email arrives and the flow triggers, it runs successfully. If it's not open, the flow fails.
The flow worked fine, with no failures, for months without needing the document open. However, now it fails 90% of the time unless I have the document open.
When I check the Cloud Flow Activity for the flow failures, I see this error message. The codes change each time it fails:
Error
Action '<my flow name>' failed
You do not have permissions to open this file in the browser.
clientRequestId: <long unique code>
serviceRequestId: <long unique code>
If I open the spreadsheet and "Resubmit" the flow from the failure log it will complete successfully.
No permissions have changed on the document since it was created, and PowerAutomate has access to that file and folder in my OneDrive. The Flow, Spreadsheet, Outlook, and OneDrive all use the same Microsoft account.
Why does PowerAutomate now require me to have my document open, and how do I fix it?
Note: I'm not sure if it's relevant, but this is on a personal M365 subscription and personal OneDrive, using the limited PowerAutomate functionality available through that. There is no business access or permissions (and never has been)
Additionally, I have tagged microsoft-power-automate-desktop even though this is Cloud not Desktop, as there is no tag microsoft-power-automate-cloud and I do not have permissions to create it.
