Ms Form answer to specific cell in excel

[LeoApril]

• Hi everyone

can I check with you all? I’m hoping to do something like this and I search through a bit but didn’t get any result. 

1. user filled ms form then input get approval from his boss 

2. boss approved

3. get filled detail and approval from ms form

4. Ms flow to search specific excel file in share point to update eg application form

5. use the answer in ms form to fill in certain cells in excel eg q1 answer to cell b10 then q2 answer to d10 and so on

6. Save the filled answer in application form (excel) to another folder with certain file name or self generate name also fine

what I’m trying to do is to get user to seek approval then use the filled detail in ms form to fill in the application form in excel. If this can’t be done, is there any idea which can replace this? 

thanks in advanced! 

[zmorek]

I guess it can be done, though I always try to tell people to not use Excel as a DataSource whenever possible. You run into lockout issues and other oddities. Without knowing your exact data structure or use case:

1. user filled ms form then input get approval from his boss 

• On form submission, get response details, initiate approval, save to DataSource as-needed

2. boss approved

• Assuming you don't have to figure out who the "boss" is, add a condition for approved vs not-approved

3. get filled detail and approval from ms form

• no change, you already have the detail (step 1, get response details) and the approval (step 2, outputs)

4. Ms flow to search specific excel file in share point to update eg application form

• You'll need a key column to do the lookup, and possibly in two files, if this is an application unique to the submission

5. use the answer in ms form to fill in certain cells in excel eg q1 answer to cell b10 then q2 answer to d10 and so on

• presumably you can do this without steps 2-4 above, your keycolumn will determine where the data goes
• if you're just generating a file to be printed out, you can consider just building the file right in Power Automate

6. Save the filled answer in application form (excel) to another folder with certain file name or self generate name also fine

• create item/get item/convert with OneDrive, or see above; Excel isn't best used for printing out data as a form, consider an alternative. You already have the data - do you need to save it permanently? Or are you just printing something out?

This seems like you're doing a Send form responses for approval,  then fill in responses into a template.

• Consider this too, Create a file in SP on Forms Submission
  • Might have more control over the output and save you a few steps

My best tip would be to avoid using Excel as a DataSource.. You're already saving the workbook on SharePoint, import it as a list. If your list is getting huge, move to CDS or SQL. This just sounds like an approved mail merge with more steps, so try and break it down into the parts that are important and decide where to store the data:

1. User submits responses
2. Boss reviews and decides approval status
3. If approved, generate document with data
4. If not approved, ???