Extracting data from excel for use in word template

[pwrpcgderb]

Hi all, I am new to power automate and cant seem to get my first flow to work. I am using the premium actions to extract data from an excel table. The table looks like the following:

Process	# of hits	type of hits	value of hits
PA	1	2	3
VA	4	5	6
LS	7	8	9

I have set up the template to have text controls that will match cells 1 through nine. What I need to be able to do is tell power automate to pull the value of a cell (b2, value 1) and place it into the correct text control. I am currently using the List Rows excel function but I cannot figure out how to make the cell data available to the next step in the flow. I am sure this is an easy step I just cant seem to get it right. 

Any help would be appreciated.  

[rzaneti]

Hi @pwrpcgderb ,

Welcome to Power Automate 🙂

As you want to populate the Word file with these 3 rows from your table, the flow design may be a little more complex that if you had one file per row. Don't worry, it is something possible and I will help you with that. 

Before we start, I have some questions:

- Does your table have more columns and rows, or only these values that your shared in the sample?

- In your Word template, did you set the input controls as plain text?

- For the future, will your table have always a fixed quantity of rows (3)?

[pwrpcgderb]

Hi @rzaneti thanks for your quick response. Here are the answers to your questions.

1. The table has a few more columns but only 3 rows. However, once I get the process down there is a version I will need to construct with more rows and fewer columns, like 20 or so rows.

2. Yes I set the input controls as plain text

3.  The quantity of rows for the most part will always be fixed. There may  be a fourth row at some point.

This data is produced every couple of weeks. I wont know the data in the rows so I cannot key of the specific value. For the purposes of the flow the value of the data is not important I just need to copy it from excel to word. 

Hope that answers your questions. Thanks so much for your help.

[rzaneti]

Hi @pwrpcgderb ,

I was running some tests during these last few days. Considering the business rules that you shared, I could not find a good scalable solution with the Power Automate table actions

I believe that we can achieve something close to it with Office Scripts, but it will still require flow modifications to make it fit to the specific file structure... 

Let me know if this scenario (changes in the flow required for each change in Excel template) makes sense for you. If yes, I will run some tests with Office Scripts and move forward.