Create session

Namespace: microsoft.graph

Create a new workbook session.

Excel APIs can be called in one of two modes:

  1. Persistent session - All changes made to the workbook are persisted (saved). This is the usual mode of operation.
  2. Non-persistent session - Changes made by the API are not saved to the source location. Instead, the Excel backend server keeps a temporary copy of the file that reflects the changes made during that particular API session. When the Excel session expires, the changes are lost. This mode is useful for apps that need to do analysis or obtain the results of a calculation or a chart image, but not affect the document state.

To represent the session in the API, use the workbook-session-id: {session-id} header.

Note: The session header is not required for an Excel API to work. However, we recommend that you use the session header to improve performance. If you don't use a session header, changes made during the API call are persisted to the file.

In some cases, creating a new session requires an indeterminate time to complete. Microsoft Graph also provides a long running operations pattern. This pattern provides a way to poll for creation status updates, without waiting for the creation to complete. The following are the steps:

  1. A Prefer: respond-async header is added to the request to indicate that it is a long-running operation.
  2. The response returns a Location header to specify the URL for polling the creation operation status. You can get the operation status by accessing the specified URL. The status will be one of the following: notStarted, running, succeeded, or failed.
  3. After the operation completes, you can request the status again and the response will show either succeeded or failed.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service US Government L4 US Government L5 (DOD) China operated by 21Vianet

Error handling

This request might occasionally receive a 504 HTTP error. The appropriate response to this error is to repeat the request.

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type Least privileged permissions Higher privileged permissions
Delegated (work or school account) Files.ReadWrite Not available.
Delegated (personal Microsoft account) Not supported. Not supported.
Application Not supported. Not supported.

HTTP request

POST /me/drive/items/{id}/workbook/createSession
POST /me/drive/root:/{item-path}:/workbook/createSession

Request headers

Name Description
Authorization Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.

Request body

In the request body, supply a JSON representation of WorkbookSessionInfo object.

Response

If successful, this method returns a 201 Created response code and a workbookSessionInfo object in the response body. For a long-running operation, it returns a 202 Accepted response code and a Location header with an empty body in the response.

Examples

Example 1: Session creation with long-running operation pattern

Request

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/me/drive/items/{drive-item-id}/workbook/createSession
Prefer: respond-async
Content-type: application/json

{
    "persistChanges": true
}

Response

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
Location: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/drive/items/{drive-item-id}/workbook/operations/{operation-id}
Content-type: application/json

{
}

With the 202 Accepted response, please see Work with APIs that take a long time to complete for how to retrieve the operation status and get the session creation result.

Example 2: Basic session creation

Request

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/me/drive/items/{id}/workbook/createSession
Content-type: application/json

{
  "persistChanges": true
}

Response

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-type: application/json

{
  "id": "id-value",
  "persistChanges": true
}