How do I save a file to my own computer?

[mapatinagy]

Hello! I’m new to the community and not a really technical person, so maybe it will be just a stupid question I made my first workflow that gets a csv file from nextcloud, imports it, makes an excel out of it and the last part (with which I struggle with) is with saving it to my computer.
There is no error message, the node runs successfully, I just doesn’t find the file to the path I give for it. I tried to do it with a “Read/Write Files from Disk” and a “Write Binary File” node too, but I was not successful with either.

Maybe it’s important to mention, that the host machine is not mine. I created an account and can join just by VPN. As the workflow itself contains sensitive information, now at first I would just prefer sharing some screenshots from the last nodes (which I would use to download the excel).

Thank you for your help.

(Select the nodes on your canvas and use the keyboard shortcuts CMD+C/CTRL+C and CMD+V/CTRL+V to copy and paste the workflow.)

{
  "nodes": [
    {
      "parameters": {
        "operation": "write",
        "fileName": "C:\\Users\\Apáti-Nagy Máté\\Downloads\\converted_csv.xlsx",
        "options": {}
      },
      "type": "n8n-nodes-base.readWriteFile",
      "typeVersion": 1,
      "position": [
        1220,
        460
      ],
      "id": "146b68ab-e805-48bb-8fa5-418a26aad25b",
      "name": "Read/Write Files from Disk"
    }
  ],
  "connections": {},
  "pinData": {}
}

{
  "nodes": [
    {
      "parameters": {
        "fileName": "C:\\Users\\Apáti-Nagy Máté\\Downloads\\converted_csv.xlsx",
        "options": {}
      },
      "name": "Write Binary File",
      "type": "n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile",
      "position": [
        1220,
        700
      ],
      "typeVersion": 1,
      "id": "3fb33b14-6b74-467f-ace9-87c3d83679c5"
    }
  ],
  "connections": {},
  "pinData": {}
}

[n8n]

It looks like your topic is missing some important information. Could you provide the following if applicable.

• n8n version:
• Database (default: SQLite):
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):
• Operating system:

[Ruslan_Yanyshyn]

Hey @mapatinagy The data will be saved on the host machine where n8n is installed not on your machine. This is why you can’t find it.
You better consider using a cloud storage service (like Google Drive or Dropbox) to store the Excel file, which avoids directly saving sensitive information on the host machine.

[mapatinagy]

Thank you for the reply @Ruslan_Yanyshyn ! First I tried to save it to the nextcloud but it didn’t work for me either that’s why I tried to save it to my computer. My credential authentication is surely working as I could import the initial csv from there, but how can I upload it back there? To any file paths I just get 404 error if I use the nextcloud node, but if I use https (tried GET and PUT too, I’m not a technical person ) I get 405 error. For file path I tried to use first the simple URL and next time tried to use the share URL as well (for the import just the share URL with adding “/download” to the end of it. Can I get some help how to configure it?

[Ruslan_Yanyshyn]

If you have Nextcloud account you can follow this guide Nextcloud credentials | n8n Docs
to create credentials nad then use them in Nextcloud node:
Here is an example workflow Move a nextcloud folder file by file | n8n workflow template

[Ingo]

Hi @mapatinagy ,

in case your n8n is self-hosted via docker compose on a local machine (is it?!), you have to work with the docker path that is mapped to a folder in the local file system. It will most likely be /data/shared to work with in n8n and \shared on the machine that it is running on. If in doubt, you can look up the configuration in the docker-compose.yml file.

I would recommend you to watch this video to get an idea of the concept.

Best of luck, Ingo

[mapatinagy]

Thank you all. I doesn’t reach the host machine, but changed the workflow and successfully managed to do what I wanted. Thank you for your help!