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A better way than Excel table to add items to Word template

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Posted on by Shell

I have a Flow that adds sales items to an Excel table and that table gets added to a Word template.

It's problematic, messages e.g. file locked for editing and the table doesn't always update in the template. I also need to clear the table to reuse the file.

There must be a better way. Can you help please?

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Building flows

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ChristianAbata 8,951 Most Valuable Professional on at

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hi @Shell unfortunally this is a kind of bug that Excel has arround was microsoft flow, I tought was solved but you can try opening a microsoft support case.

See could be solved for the ms enginering team.

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Shell 23 on at

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Is there a different way to do it that doesn't involve Excel?

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ChristianAbata 8,951 Most Valuable Professional on at

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shure @Shell you can use sharepoint List

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Shell 23 on at

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Already using SharePoint lists. I want the workflow to add information to a content type template ( I can do that successfully using SharePoint designer) but I also need to add repeating data.
I could update an excel table and input that into the template but it doesn't always work. I then need to clear the rows from the table so it can be used again, that's when I get the file locked message.

I can create an HTML table but how do I get that into the Word document?

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TesDA 611 on at

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You can use a variable, thats how I'm doing it. This is from sql, but the same would work from sharepoint.

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TesDA 611 on at

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Just note, something I've learned the hard way. Sharepoint needs time to think. Make sure to add plenty of delays in there so that the flow doesn't move faster then the time it takes for sharepoint to process your request.

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Paulie78 8,422 Moderator on at

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@Shell I would do it the way that @TesDA has explained. Instead of putting your figures into Excel, just load them into a JSON array and use that as your source of repeating data for the Word template.

The Excel connector is so fussy, which you can work around with a do until loop, but it can take ages for the file to free up.

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Shell 23 on at

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Thanks @TesDA
That's the approach I'm taking but unfortunately we don't have the premium action 'Populate Microsoft Word template' 😢

I have the arrays set up but how to get that into the content-type template in the document library

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