Copying text from an Excel cell to a MS Word document

[wcleveland]

Hello

I need to extract text from several individual cells in Excel and NOT as a table. I want to paste the contents of each individual cell into a different, specific place into a Word document and have found no references on even where to get started with such a task. When I use the Desktop app for Power Automate, I don't even see how to tap into MS Word.

I am brand new to PowerAutomate and have started some flows in Desktop, because all of my work is being done on apps on my computer. I am open to learning about the Cloud, but still very much a novice.

Any direction to learning resources or appropriate search terms to help me learn this platform would be appreciated.

Thanks,

WC

[Rhiassuring]

It will depend how the data is organized in your Excel sheet. It is doable in either tool, it will come down to what you'd prefer to use. I always lean Cloud because I don't have another machine to run a bot off of, personally.  If you're using Word via PAD though, you're going to need to program in the hot keys - that's the best practice (as I understand it) for PAD and non-integrated tools. 

Can you tell us a bit about your Excel sheet? There are many ways to do it, but the normal way to get data out of Excel is to use the "Get Rows from a Table" (so it would need to be formatted as a table in Excel even if you don't want a table in Word) so you can access it easily. 

Then, for example, if you have unique row keys (a unique value you can use in each row to access the data you want to grab and put into Word), then you're golden. If not, we need to find another way.

Needs some analysis to give a good opinion & steps forward.

[NotPoodle]

An option for doing it in the cloud: I know you don't want/have a table in your excel but if you created a table on another tab and mapped the cells from your main sheet to the table then you could use excel 'get row' to grab the data from your table which is grabbing the data from your main excel sheet that maintains the format you want. you can then use the Word connector 'Populate a Microsoft Word Template' to get the data into a word template - You will need to setup your word template by adding text content controls where you want stuff to go.

I have a few excel sheets where i need to maintain a specific format that is human friendly but also want to access the data in power automate and get the data into word docs. This is how i do it.

[wcleveland]

@Rhiassuring 

Thanks so much for your response.

I set up one table in the Excel sheet that has content to help write a report. This table has about 25 cells in a column that has specific information to be put into the report at different places (not all one table, but 25 separate locations in the Word doc).

I looked for "get rows" in PAD and this did not come up as an action.

How does one program hot keys in PAD?

Any thoughts to move this forward much appreciated.

WC

[wcleveland]

Thanks @NotPoodle 

Do you know of any resources that would help this beginner map get the flow started so I could learn step-by-step to get started? I'm struggling with beginner-level issues.

Thanks

WC

[Rhiassuring · Accepted solution]

Hi there, 

So if this is sort of what I'm thinking - like a Project Profile type of thing, or a Design Criteria, or a Project Plan - then each of your 25 cells will probably have an associated Section #.   So like, Column A: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.1.1... etc. That would be a good unique key. Then column B, the data you want input into each of those sections. 

If that is the case, then I would use Cloud, not PAD. With PAD, when I say "program", I really just mean that you'd want to use keyboard strokes instead of mouse clicks. If you don't know how to do those things in PAD, then I strongly suggest going through some intro beginner videos for PAD because those are definitely important!

But... if your data fits as I suggested above... we can definitely do this in Cloud alone. Let me know what you think. I'll be back in about 14 - 16h. (That might seem specific but I'm in the Pacific timezone, and tomorrow is my PA Forum day -- going for a hike and then will be here with coffee 🙂 ) 

[NotPoodle · Accepted solution]

Hey WC,

I dont know of a particular resource that will show you exactly what i do but there are loads of great resources out there. YouTube has been especially helpful on my journey..

i'm not an expert, i'm still finding my way, but i'll try to explain how i do it, with images. Again, this is for Cloud rather than PAD.

Here is my nice excel form formatted for humans to fill in. Lots of cells everywhere, not in a table, not easily digestible by Power Automate

Here is sheet 2 in the spreadsheet. I've created a single line table with an id column containing 1 and the other cells are just =Cell from front sheet.

Now we can use Excel 'Get Row' to get this one row but before we do that we need to setup our word template!

 On the developer tab (you may need to enable this in settings) there are content controls us the Aa one highlighted to add a content box that power automate will be able to see. use the properties button to give each content box a name. 

Now finally on to the flow.

For the get row connector we navigate to where our excel file is stored, the key column is the 'ID' column we set up and populated with 1. the key is 1. Now use the populate MS word template connector and again navigate to where your word template is stored. you will see all the content control boxes you added to the word template. you can see that the excel fields from your table can now be inserted to the right places in your word doc.

After that you can 'Create File' or convert to pdf or whatever else you want to do.

Hope this helps