Understanding Power Automate ‘Do Until’ Limits with Excel Online Business Connector

When integrating with Excel via the Excel Online Business Connector, developers often face intriguing challenges. One such occasional issue deals with the ‘power automate do until limits’. This article sheds light on this issue and provides insights to help developers navigate around it.

An Observed Glitch with Excel Online Business Connector

In specific scenarios when working with Excel Online Business Connector, one might come across an error while trying to add tables from Excel in design view. The error message displayed would be:

“The tables didn’t load correctly. Please try again. The service rate limit has been reached. Please wait and try again later. Too many requests to Graph API. Please try again later.”

This error message can be puzzling as it often surfaces even without reaching the threshold of the Graph API service limit. For context, the Excel limit is set at 5000 requests per second for every 10 seconds across a tenant.

Underlying Causes and Remedies

Further information about the Graph API throttling can be found on Microsoft’s official documentation. However, the exact cause of this error remains elusive. There have been instances reported by users facing similar issues when working with Power Automate. From the patterns observed, it seems that the root cause might be a service or network issue that momentarily prevents the connector from accessing the data storage (e.g., OneDrive/SharePoint). This leads the connector to retry until the Graph API limit is breached.

Though there isn’t a direct solution to this problem, a potential workaround can be waiting for a while, typically around 30 minutes, after which the connectivity to Excel usually resumes.

Final Thoughts

While the majority of users might never come across this particular glitch, it’s essential to be aware of it, especially for those making extensive use of Excel with Power Apps. Being forewarned is forearmed.

If you ever find yourself stuck with this or any other technical challenge, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to help and provide guidance tailored to your specific needs.