How to Initialize a Data Table in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop
💡 When working with data tables in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, you may encounter scenarios where you need to start with an empty data table. For example, you may want to build the table dynamically, or clear an existing data table at the start of a new loop. In this article, we will show you 2 methods to initialize a data table — that is, to set it to an empty state — using built-in actions.
Problem Description
There are several practical reasons for initializing a data table:
Dynamic population — You want to add rows at runtime, based on data retrieved from an API, a file, or a loop.
Clearing old data — You are reusing a variable and want to make sure it starts empty in each run.
Conditional building — You are constructing different table structures depending on certain conditions.
Solution
Method 1 - Create new data table
You can easily initialize an empty data table using the Create new data table action.
Note: Make sure it is showing 0 Rows, 0 Columns as we want to create an empty data table.
Method 2 - Set variable
You can also use the Set variable action — set the value to
%{ }%
This is the syntax to represent an empty data table in Power Automate Desktop.
If you would like to also initialize the number of columns in the data table together with the column names, use the following syntax instead:
%{ ^['Col_A', 'Col_B', 'Col_C'] }%
In the example above, we are defining 3 columns with the headers Col_A, Col_B and Col_C, but feel free to change this to suit your requirements.
🧩Tip: Once initialized, you can add columns and rows dynamically using the Insert row into data table or Insert column into data table actions.
Additional Information
Last updated on: 5 Jun 2025
Tested version(s): 2.55.158.25087
Prerequisites: None
Dependencies: None
Known issues: None
