I was listening to the PowerApps/Flow course below, and, of course, right off the bat ran into something that made me backtrack what was said in the video a few times till I finally figured out what was going wrong. Here is the course url, btw (I like the course so far, though I’m definitely making my share of newbie mistakes):
https://www.edx.org/course/developing-business-applications-power-microsoft-dat227x-0
In the PowerApps, I was supposed to create a new app connected to an excel spreadsheet stored on OneDrive. So, I was supposed to see this as a result:
Here is what I was actually seeing – notice how there was no data:
It looked like the app was working, to an extent. At least I was able to preview the app, so I tried adding a new record, and it did ask for all the right fields. But it was not willing to save my new records – there was an error (“there was a problem saving your changes. The data source may be invalid”):
Eventually, I realized that I should have listened to the course instructor better, and I should have closed the Excel. But, then, I would not have a reason to write this post..
Once I closed the Excel, my app just started to work:
So.. Close the Excel – make sure the file is not locked! Now the question is, of course, it that’s how it should be, or if it’s an issue. What if somebody wanted to have a spreadsheet updated through an app, while somebody else is still looking at it in Excel? Will follow up if I find out more (or let me know if you have an answer)
PS. Just did a quick search to see if there were issues like this.. Not 100% sure, but this one looks similar: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/Excel-in-Onedrive-can-t-write-file-to-souce/m-p/41473#M17162