CMD session actions
Use the Open CMD session action to commence a command prompt session. Specify the working folder, and optionally change the code page in the Advanced section. All CMD session actions require the produced CMD session variable.
To run a command, deploy the Write to CMD session action, specify a command, and select to send Enter. The following example creates a new folder in the current working directory.
To ensure that a specific output appears on the command prompt before proceeding with subsequent actions, use the Wait for text on CMD session action. Specify the text to expect or enter a regular expression and enable the appropriate option for regular expressions.
When all the CMD tasks are complete, use the Close CMD session action to terminate the CMD session.
Open CMD session
Open a new CMD session.
Important
To prevent unauthorized access, Windows require administrator rights to access protected folders. To use a protected folder as a working folder in the Open CMD session action, run Power Automate with administrator rights. To find more information regarding running Power Automate as an administrator, go to Run Power Automate with elevated rights.
Input parameters
| Argument | Optional | Accepts | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Working folder | Yes | Folder | The full path of the folder to start the CMD session, if applicable | |
| Change code page | N/A | Boolean value | False | Specifies whether to change the session's current code page |
| Encoding | No | ASMO-708 : Arabic (ASMO 708), big5 : Chinese Traditional (Big5), cp1025 : IBM EBCDIC (Cyrillic Serbian-Bulgarian), cp866 : Cyrillic (DOS), cp875 : IBM EBCDIC (Greek Modern), csISO2022JP : Japanese (JIS-Allow 1 byte Kana), DOS-720 : Arabic (DOS), DOS-862 : Hebrew (DOS), EUC-CN : Chinese Simplified (EUC), EUC-JP : Japanese (JIS 0208-1990 and 0212-1990), euc-jp : Japanese (EUC), euc-kr : Korean (EUC), GB18030 : Chinese Simplified (GB18030), gb2312 : Chinese Simplified (GB2312), hz-gb-2312 : Chinese Simplified (HZ), IBM-Thai : IBM EBCDIC (Thai), IBM00858 : OEM Multilingual Latin I, IBM00924 : IBM Latin-1, IBM01047 : IBM Latin-1, IBM01140 : IBM EBCDIC (US-Canada-Euro), IBM01141 : IBM EBCDIC (Germany-Euro), IBM01142 : IBM EBCDIC (Denmark-Norway-Euro), IBM01143 : IBM EBCDIC (Finland-Sweden-Euro), IBM01144 : IBM EBCDIC (Italy-Euro), IBM01145 : IBM EBCDIC (Spain-Euro), IBM01146 : IBM EBCDIC (UK-Euro), IBM01147 : IBM EBCDIC (France-Euro), IBM01148 : IBM EBCDIC (International-Euro), IBM01149 : IBM EBCDIC (Icelandic-Euro), IBM037 : IBM EBCDIC (US-Canada), IBM1026 : IBM EBCDIC (Turkish Latin-5), IBM273 : IBM EBCDIC (Germany), IBM277 : IBM EBCDIC (Denmark-Norway), IBM278 : IBM EBCDIC (Finland-Sweden), IBM280 : IBM EBCDIC (Italy), IBM284 : IBM EBCDIC (Spain), IBM285 : IBM EBCDIC (UK), IBM290 : IBM EBCDIC (Japanese katakana), IBM297 : IBM EBCDIC (France), IBM420 : IBM EBCDIC (Arabic), IBM423 : IBM EBCDIC (Greek), IBM424 : IBM EBCDIC (Hebrew), IBM437 : OEM United States, IBM500 : IBM EBCDIC (International), ibm737 : Greek (DOS), ibm775 : Baltic (DOS), ibm850 : Western European (DOS), ibm852 : Central European (DOS), IBM855 : OEM Cyrillic, ibm857 : Turkish (DOS), IBM860 : Portuguese (DOS), ibm861 : Icelandic (DOS), IBM863 : French Canadian (DOS), IBM864 : Arabic (864), IBM865 : Nordic (DOS), ibm869 : Greek, Modern (DOS), IBM870 : IBM EBCDIC (Multilingual Latin-2), IBM871 : IBM EBCDIC (Icelandic), IBM880 : IBM EBCDIC (Cyrillic Russian), IBM905 : IBM EBCDIC (Turkish), iso-2022-jp : Japanese (JIS), iso-2022-jp : Japanese (JIS-Allow 1 byte Kana - SO/SI), iso-2022-kr : Korean (ISO), iso-8859-1 : Western European (ISO), iso-8859-13 : Estonian (ISO), iso-8859-15 : Latin 9 (ISO), iso-8859-2 : Central European (ISO), iso-8859-3 : Latin 3 (ISO), iso-8859-4 : Baltic (ISO), iso-8859-5 : Cyrillic (ISO), iso-8859-6 : Arabic (ISO), iso-8859-7 : Greek (ISO), iso-8859-8 : Hebrew (ISO-Visual), iso-8859-8-i : Hebrew (ISO-Logical), iso-8859-9 : Turkish (ISO), Johab : Korean (Johab), koi8-r : Cyrillic (KOI8-R), koi8-u : Cyrillic (KOI8-U), ks_c_5601-1987 : Korean, macintosh : Western European (Mac), shift_jis : Japanese (Shift-JIS), us-ascii : US-ASCII, utf-16 : Unicode, utf-16BE : Unicode (Big-Endian), utf-32 : Unicode (UTF-32), utf-32BE : Unicode (UTF-32 Big-Endian), utf-7 : Unicode (UTF-7), utf-8 : Unicode (UTF-8), windows-1250 : Central European (Windows), windows-1251 : Cyrillic (Windows), Windows-1252 : Western European (Windows), windows-1253 : Greek (Windows), windows-1254 : Turkish (Windows), windows-1255 : Hebrew (Windows), windows-1256 : Arabic (Windows), windows-1257 : Baltic (Windows), windows-1258 : Vietnamese (Windows), windows-874 : Thai (Windows), x-Chinese-CNS : Chinese Traditional (CNS), x-Chinese-Eten : Chinese Traditional (Eten), x-cp20001 : TCA Taiwan, x-cp20003 : IBM5550 Taiwan, x-cp20004 : TeleText Taiwan, x-cp20005 : Wang Taiwan, x-cp20261 : T.61, x-cp20269 : ISO-6937, x-cp20936 : Chinese Simplified (GB2312-80), x-cp20949 : Korean Wansung, x-cp50227 : Chinese Simplified (ISO-2022), x-EBCDIC-KoreanExtended : IBM EBCDIC (Korean Extended), x-Europa : Europa, x-IA5 : Western European (IA5), x-IA5-German : German (IA5), x-IA5-Norwegian : Norwegian (IA5), x-IA5-Swedish : Swedish (IA5), x-iscii-as : ISCII Assamese, x-iscii-be : ISCII Bengali, x-iscii-de : ISCII Devanagari, x-iscii-gu : ISCII Gujarati, x-iscii-ka : ISCII Kannada, x-iscii-ma : ISCII Malayalam, x-iscii-or : ISCII Oriya, x-iscii-pa : ISCII Punjabi, x-iscii-ta : ISCII Tamil, x-iscii-te : ISCII Telugu, x-mac-arabic : Arabic (Mac), x-mac-ce : Central European (Mac), x-mac-chinesesimp : Chinese Simplified (Mac), x-mac-chinesetrad : Chinese Traditional (Mac), x-mac-croatian : Croatian (Mac), x-mac-cyrillic : Cyrillic (Mac), x-mac-greek : Greek (Mac), x-mac-hebrew : Hebrew (Mac), x-mac-icelandic : Icelandic (Mac), x-mac-japanese : Japanese (Mac), x-mac-korean : Korean (Mac), x-mac-romanian : Romanian (Mac), x-mac-thai : Thai (Mac), x-mac-turkish : Turkish (Mac), x-mac-ukrainian : Ukrainian (Mac)` | utf-8 : Unicode (UTF-8) | The encoding to use when reading the output |
Variables produced
| Argument | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CmdSession | CMD session | The CMD session for use with later CMD actions |
Exceptions
| Exception | Description |
|---|---|
| Can't start command session | Indicates a problem initiating a CMD session |
| Working directory doesn't exist | Indicates that an error occurred trying to locate the working directory |
Read from CMD session
Read the output of a CMD session.
Input parameters
| Argument | Optional | Accepts | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMD session | No | CMD session | A previously opened CMD session | |
| Separate output from error | N/A | Boolean value | False | Specifies whether to store the standard output and the standard error into different variables or combined into one |
Variables produced
| Argument | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CmdOutput | Text value | The CMD session's standard output |
| CmdError | Text value | The CMD session's standard error |
Exceptions
| Exception | Description |
|---|---|
| CMD session is closed | Indicates that the CMD session specified is closed |
Write to CMD session
Execute a command on an open CMD session.
Input parameters
| Argument | Optional | Accepts | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMD session | No | CMD session | A previously opened CMD session variable | |
| Command | No | Text value | The name of the command to execute | |
| Send Enter after command | N/A | Boolean value | True | Specifies whether to send an Enter the command |
Variables produced
This action doesn't produce any variables.
Exceptions
| Exception | Description |
|---|---|
| Can't write to CMD session | Indicates an error writing to a CMD session |
| CMD session is closed | Indicates that the CMD session specified is closed |
Wait for text on CMD session
Wait for a specific text on a previously opened CMD session.
Input parameters
| Argument | Optional | Accepts | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMD session | No | CMD session | An open CMD session variable | |
| Text to wait | No | Text value | The text or regular expression to wait to appear on standard output or on standard error | |
| Is regular expression | N/A | Boolean value | False | Specifies whether to wait for a regular expression instead of plain text |
| Ignore case | N/A | Boolean value | True | Specifies whether the text to wait should match with standard output or standard error without taking into account the case of the text |
| Timeout | Yes | Numeric value | 0 | Specifies whether to wait indefinitely for the text to appear or to fail if the text doesn't show up within a set time period |
Note
Power Automate's regular expression engine is .NET. To find more information about regular expressions, go to Regular Expression Language - Quick Reference.
Variables produced
This action doesn't produce any variables.
Exceptions
| Exception | Description |
|---|---|
| CMD session is closed | Indicates that the CMD session specified is closed |
| Timeout occurred while waiting for text | Indicates that the specified timeout period has elapsed before the text appeared in the command session |
Close CMD session
Close a previously opened CMD session.
Input parameters
| Argument | Optional | Accepts | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMD session | No | CMD session | The CMD session to close. Specify this variable in an open CMD session action |
Variables produced
This action doesn't produce any variables.
Exceptions
This action doesn't include any exceptions.