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"Populate a Microsoft Word template" Action Retrieving Outdated Document in Power Automate Workflow

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Posted on by CU07110258-0

Dear Power Automate Community,

I'm currently working on a Power Automate solution for a client project. The task at hand involves using the "Populate a Microsoft Word template" action from the Word Online (Business) connector to generate documents. This process populates a template with values from a SharePoint list.

However, I've run into an issue where any modifications made to the Template document stored in the SharePoint document library are not reflected when the document is processed by the "Populate a Microsoft Word template" action. This includes any changes to the document content, such as adding content or removing existing text.

Interestingly, when the same document is accessed directly from the MS Word desktop client, all the modifications appear as expected.

I've taken into account and mitigated potential contributing factors such as concurrency issues, and versioning inconsistencies. Yet, the issue persists, leading me to consider other possibilities such as some internal caching mechanism within the action, or another underlying factor that remains unidentified.

Therefore, I'm reaching out to this knowledgeable community for guidance. Has anyone encountered a similar issue in your workflows dealing with Word documents using Word Online connector? How have you ensured that the most recent version of the document is retrieved and processed by the workflow?

Your valuable insights and practical suggestions would be greatly appreciated and would assist in advancing this project for my client.

Thank you for your time and assistance in this matter.

Best Regards,
Hasan

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wskinnermctc 6,519 Moderator on at

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So are you saying that the Template is being changed and that is not being reflected in the connector?
For Example: You have a template with Name PhoneNumber fields that you want to populate with power automate. You set up a flow to populate the fields and it works.
Then you realized you wanted to include Email field in the template, so you modify the template to now have Name PhoneNumber and Email field.
But the connector doesn't recognize that the Email field was added to the template?

Or are you saying after the connector populates a template, the data does not show when you go look at the document after it was populated by the flow?

Can you show screenshots of your flow?

I have a flow where the steps are:
Populate a Microsoft Word template
SharePoint - Create File
If I populate the new created file with a flow. Then go to sharepoint and open the file in the browser. The fields that I just populated do not show. However, if I select editing and Open in Desktop App then the fields will be populated correctly.
CU07110258-0 on at

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Thank you for your quick response, wskinnermctc.

Your first question hits the mark. When I make modifications to the template document stored in the SharePoint document library, these changes aren't immediately reflected when the document is processed by the "Populate a Microsoft Word template" action. To put it in the context of the example you provided, if an Email field is added to the template, the connector doesn't recognize this addition immediately.

It does seem like a caching issue, as the changes eventually surface in the newly generated document after a certain period of time. However, this initial delay in reflecting the template changes is the main issue I am facing and trying to address. Despite my efforts, the issue remains unresolved.

I truly appreciate your assistance as we navigate through this problem. I am hopeful that we can find a solution soon, or even better if Microsoft could address this issue directly, it would be fantastic.

Here are the screenshots of the flow:
Fillmord 13 on at

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@hasannaqvi Having the same issue - was this ever resolved? If so How ? . And how long did it take before the updated template would eventually work? I waited 4 hours and still hasn't worked.