Populate MS Word Template From FLOW with Rich Text

[sumitmukund]

Hi,

We have a scenario wherein we have a rich text editor in PowerAPPs and we want to populate that text in a predifened MS word template using MS Flow. The rich text editor generates an html in the backend and if we simply populate that in MS word template then we see all the html tags.

If we try to convert the html to text in Flow and then populate then the content looses all its formatting.

Any help would be much appreciated.!

[yashag2255 · Accepted solution]

Hey @sumitmukund 

Currently rich text is not supported for Word Templates in Flow. Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/wordonlinebusiness/#createfileitem. You can check all teh available features and limitations here. 

The rich text feature should be added soon and you can create an idea or upvote similar ones for this here: 

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

Hope this Helps!

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS!

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @sumitmukund ,

If you want the similar feature to be supported by MS Flow, please consider voting for the similar ideas in the forum below:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Microsoft-Word-Populate-a-Template-to-support-more-th...

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Need-to-populate-the-word-template-with-rich-text/idi...

Best Regards,

[TonyBr]

Hi whilst we wait on this functionality is there a work around? e.g. converting rich text to an image and then embedding that in a word document or an alternative action? Thanks.

[rjhale]

I've been waiting on a project that will require the use of the rich text control.  Do you have any sense if this is still a feature that is being worked on?  I voted on the couple of UserVoice items, but I haven't seen any status updates.  

Thanks. 

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-bacao-msft , 

just wanted to check if there are any updates?

[Anonymous]

This is not 'solved'. this is an issue and just saying this is not supported doesn't solve anything.

[VL]

This is definitely a large gap in capability for this connector .  Can't believe there was an understanding that support for rich text would be added in 2019 after initial release/availability of the connector and we STILL don't have this feature mid-2021.  We REALLY need to be able to output rich text fields to a word doc for bulleted lists or just a simple line break as a long text field is populated in SharePoint.  Using plain text for everything just looks messy for anything other than a short text field.

[SteveCochrane]

Amen!  I'm tired of people saying a question is "solved" when we have to vote for a new feature which may or may not ever be added. 🙄   I've seen some like this years ago, and in 2021 the feature hasn't been added.

[UrklnmeMS]

another kick in the teeth from MS where they totally did not include an important feature.   My clients are astounded that I cannot provide what seems like a simple thing in the automated forms.

PLEASE FIX THIS ASAP!!!  

[gautamiedara]

Hi,

I am unable to view the solution. Is there a way to get access to the solution. I want the rich text to be read from sharepoint list and get replaced in template of MS Word.

Thanks,

Gautami

[RIchard_Ambrose]

Hi All,

I see the market has been waiting nearly 3 years for this to be fixed. Its now mid 2022 can anyone confirm if MS has resolved this yet or whether there is another work around to this issue. Not being able to print out a word template with rich text formatting totally eliminates any benefit of this function which seems unbelievable for a major global CRM in the first place yet still no solution after 3 years??

Thanks

Richard

[urklnme]

For my workaround, I used a web resource to insert the RTF into my portal form, then used that in a flow.  However, I am converting MS Word to a PDF after that, so I am not doing html. 

[rjhale]

We struggled with this too as I really needed rich text inside of a word document for various projects.  We ended up using html a lot more than we expected for this type of thing.  We'll essentially create html documents in SharePoint and then convert those directly to PDF.  The OneDrive action that can be used to convert html to pdf was not very effective for us, so we ended up using Encodian's actions initially. 

We're now moving into using Power Automate Desktop (PAD) Flows, and we'll pair that with a Cloud Flow.  The Cloud Flow will handle everything up until the point where we need to convert from html to pdf, and then we trigger a PAD Flow to essentially loop over those html files and print them to pdf using either the Acrobat PDF Printer or the built-in Microsoft PDF Printer.  This certainly adds some complexity to the process, but we kind of had to given the cost of running thousands of conversion transactions with Encodian.  Encodian does have a ton of useful actions that we do incorporate into our production Flows, however; we would have had to move to one of their most expensive licensing tiers given the volume of conversions we're doing per month. 

[chathuranga12]

Hi any update on this ? still waiting 

[SaschaLohse]

is there a timeline when when this feature will be available?

[Adverage]

4 years later it is not possible. It is truly a shame 🙂

[DragonLord]

shameful is the word ...

[vaderj]

So its been 3.5 years now, and there are 5+ pages of people begging for this feature, many of them with more than 100+ upvotes: https://ideas.powerautomate.com/d365community/search/086dd68e-597f-ec11-8d21-0022482e8f9f?q=rich+tex...

So, obviously, voting on that is just a waste of everyones time as clearly nobody is monitoring 

[AlexEncodian]

Hi,

Encodian's Populate Word Document action supports insertion of rich text / HTML into Word documents as well as a lot of other time savers (repeating sections, conditional logic, etc). It also goes beyond the native 10MB file size limit for populating word docs if you need to insert images. 

It is a third party connector but FYI its free for low volume requirements.

cc @vaderj , @DragonLord , @Adverage , @SaschaLohse , @chathuranga12 , @rjhale , @urklnme , @RIchard_Ambrose , @gautamiedara , @SteveCochrane , @TonyBr , @yashag2255