Power Automate - Populate an Office Template

Source: Populate a Word Template with Power Automate | How to Tutorial - YouTube and Correspondence with June M at work

• Create Microsoft Word Template with content controls - for example, select a template and creating fields like text and images to populate later in Power Automate
• Populate Word Template with Power Automate - for example, selecting data from the Dataverse and putting them into fields in the template
• Generate Word Document - for example, put content in the template and and email to a user and store in a data source

Create Microsoft Word Template with content controls

• Use Microsoft Word, create new or use existing template
• Enable Developer tab in Word - File > Options > Customize Ribbon > Developer
• Use Developer tab, select text on screen, and insert a control, like a text control, picture controls
  • Give controls unique titles
• When done editing template, save to OneDrive

Populate Word Template with Power Automate

• Create a new instant cloud flow
• Use a manual trigger
• Add action, use Word Online (Business) connector
  • Set template location to OneDrive location of template file
  • Use Advanced Parameters to see content controls - should be all controls you created in the template
    • For images, for example, can get images from a data connector, choose dynamic content
      • Add a step before Word step, use SharePoint get to an image
• Add action, Office 365 Office connector
  • Send to email of your choice, subject
  • Attach populated Word document:
    • Attachments
      • Name: Filled-In.docx
      • Content: choose from dynamic content from Word step
        • Choose text input
        • Make sure there are no double quotes around the dynamic content generated Word document

Generate Word Document from Data Source

• Manually trigger flow to test above steps
• Create new flow with action: for a selection item in SharePoint, called “Generate Document”
  • Get details of item, for example in SharePoint use below steps
• SharePoint - Get Item: choose site, list, and ID (dynamic content from trigger action)
• Compose - get dynamic content, for example a “category” value from the get item from previous step
• SharePoint - Get file content:
  • Get image based on category of compose step
• Step: Word Connector, Populate Word document
  • See content controls and populate using data from text and images from previous steps. Most details are from the get item step
• Send an email
  • Get user’s email and subject from item
  • Attachments as before
• SharePoint: Add attachment
  • Choose file name like document.docx and document content as dynamic content from Word step