[Solved] Fix “File is locked for shared use” in Power Automate: The Simple 6-Minute Delay Method

Have you ever encountered the frustrating “File is locked for shared use” error when trying to delete an Excel file in Power Automate?
Even though your flow has finished processing the file, SharePoint keeps it locked, and the “Delete file” action fails.

In this article, I will share a simple and reliable workaround to solve this issue: the 6-minute wait method.

Error: “File is locked for sharing…”
Excel Tables Remain Locked for 6 Minutes After Use in Flow
Creating a Flow That Waits 6 Minutes Before Deletion
Testing the Flow
Alternative: What about Graph API?
Related Articles

Error: “File is locked for sharing…”

Let’s say you have an Excel file with a table like this (sample data):

When you try to delete this file using the “Delete file” action after accessing it in your flow:

You’ll encounter this error:

This issue commonly occurs in scenarios like the one described in this article:

Power Apps: Upload Files to SharePoint Document Library (V2 Trigger Method)

Directly uploading files from Power Apps to a SharePoint Document Library isn't supported out-of-the-box. However, using...

When you want to:

Upload an Excel file through Power Apps
Process data from its tables
Delete the Excel file at the end of the flow

Not being able to resolve this error can be quite problematic for your automation process.

Excel Tables Remain Locked for 6 Minutes After Use in Flow

While searching for a solution, I found this article:

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According to the article, when you use an Excel table in your flow, the Excel file remains locked for 6 minutes. Therefore, if you want to delete the file, you need to wait 6 minutes before executing the deletion.

Creating a Flow That Waits 6 Minutes Before Deletion

So, I created a flow that deletes the Excel file after waiting for 6 minutes.

First, add a “Do until” action with “Delete file” and “Delay” actions. Set up the left side of the Do Until condition like this:

 outputs('Delete_file_action_name')['statusCode']

Set the condition to “is equal to” 200.

Then set the “Delay” action to 6 minutes. Note: Since the lock lasts approximately 6 minutes, you might want to try shorter intervals like 2 or 3 minutes for faster retry attempts if deletion fails. However, I’ll stick with 6 minutes for now.

Next, click on “Configure run after” for the “Delay” action:

Select “has failed” and click “Done” to complete the setup!

Testing the Flow

After running the flow, confirm that both “Create file” and “Get table” actions completed successfully.

Verify that the Excel file was properly created in the document library.

After approximately 6 minutes, the flow completed successfully!

Looking at the details, we can see that the first deletion attempt failed,

But the second deletion attempt after 6 minutes was successful!

And of course, the file was successfully deleted from the document library!

In conclusion, we’ve learned that when you need to delete an Excel file that has been referenced for its tables within the same flow, you must wait 6 minutes before the deletion can be successful.

Alternative: What about Graph API?

Some advanced users might suggest using Microsoft Graph API to force delete the file or break the lock. While that is a valid technical solution, it requires setting up complex App Registrations and handling authentication tokens.

For most scenarios, simply waiting 6 minutes is much easier to implement and maintain. Unless you have a strict requirement to delete the file instantly, I highly recommend this “Delay” method for its simplicity.