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Hello,
I have been working on trying to populate a complex Word template with data from several SharePoint lists, but am running into difficulty with repeating rows inside of a larger item. I'm not sure if this is a limitation within Word or Power Automate, but I think my issue is within Power Automate, so I am sharing all info. In Power Automate, the Populate a Word Template does not work within a For each loop or any other control. As long as the final file is a PDF, I do not have to use Word, if there is another option.
For a singular project, I can populate: Title (single line of text), Description (multiple lines of text), Product List (repeating rows of "Product" and "Status"), plus more of the same.
What I cannot do is repeat all the items listed above for multiple projects within the same Word doc: having Title, Description and Product List for Title1, Title2, etc.
Examples
| Can do | Can't Do |
Title 1 Description 1 Products Product A, Completed Product B, In process Product C, Not started | Title 1 Description 1 Products Product A, Completed Product B, In process Product C, Not started
Title 2 Description 2 Products Product A, Completed Product B, Completed Product C, In process |
I have tried creating an HTML document then replacing the fields just like in Word, where [title] is replaced by TitleName - and this works until I need to repeat for all projects. I have also tried writing my own JSON (which has been validated), and it works again until the whole project needs to be repeated for all projects in the SharePoint list.
I'm not sure what specific information you all need to help. I have searched online for similar items and tried to modify Flows from Reza Dorrani , Laura Rogers and many more. Laura has a video on looping through a task list - which is great, but I need more than just the repeating rows and I need it all in one file, emails and not multiple files.
Thanks,
Cheryl
Hi there - could you please post your final flow to help out those who are trying to solve the same challenge?
Thanks!
The first actions in the outermost loop should be actions that set all the variables. You can clear an array variable by using the set variable action and setting it to null. You can clear a string variable with the same action and setting it to string('').
That definitely helped a lot - moving the book list loop inside of where I was getting the other information. The (hopefully) last issue I am having is that the variable will not clear after each round in the loop.
I've tried using a condition to see if the variable is null (using the expression editor), checking if the length of the variable is = 0, and in each appending the variable to null (using the expression editor) - and then not using a condition but still appending the variable to be null, '', "", or even a space. I sue the compose step to see what is in the variable at various times - and this is happening
I've tried placing the append to null (blank, '', "") at various points in the flow (beginning, end, before appending) - it never quite works.
Is it possible to empty the string value between loops? Or is there another way to only show the active loop's data?
I truly appreciate all of your help - thank you!
Cheryl
If you want the list of books for each project in a section with each project then it has to be inside the loop where you are processing each project. You can't do it in a separate place or the list won't appear at the right point in the file even if you do filter the list of books.
It is one file with a section for each project. That's what I was trying to do - for each project, add only the titles that are part of that project. Since the project titles and number of projects for each person are different, I need each of those to be dynamic.
To check if a book is part of that project, I would need a list of all books in each project - but that is what I am trying to get. Here's what I've tried:
Now, this does remove the duplicates from my PDF, but still shows all book titles, even if they aren't part of the project. It keeps appending the varProjBookList for all projects in the array.
I tried "is equal to" instead of "contains" but that didn't work at all.
I know it has to be the logic that I am using that is not producing what I am trying to get - but I'm not sure what I am missing?
Is the output of the flow one file with a section for each project or one file per project? It sounds like its one section per project. If that is the case I don't think you want the double loop where you are looping through the projects. I think what you want at that point is a condition that checks each book to see if it is part of that project. If it is add it, if it isn't skip it. That should then be part of the overall project loop so you are appending each book list to the project as you are processing the project.
Hi, @Pstork1 ,
Sorry it has taken me so long to get back on this - other higher priority projects came up. This has mostly helped (I've been able to successfully add most parts into the string variables, concatenate them, create the file and view it) , but I am still not successful with one part of my request though: filtering a list for just the project listed.
In this report, I will have multiple projects that each have repeating rows sections (see example 1 below, data will match the screenshots for ease - please excuse my weird test data) - which I can get with what I created from your suggestions, but the data for the repeating rows section within each project is listing all data for all projects, not just the project it's part of (see image Results), so I tried to get the data a different way which somewhat works.
Example 1
Report for Cheryl C (will have a report for multiple researchers)
ABC Reading Rainbow, active
Some description of the project
Staff on the project
Book List
Outcomes List
123 Math Stories, active
Some description of the project
Staff on the project
Book List
Outcomes List
Results
My Flow
Close up on appending book list variables which is the part not working how I want
I tried filtering the data through Parse JSON then using Select to show only the fields I need then using Create HTML table - it still always lists the entire list, not just for that project. Project title is the first column in the lists:
I'd appreciate any help or insight you (or anyone else) can give into this - Thanks!
Cheryl
There isn't really a trick. Its a bit tougher because you are working with RAW HTML. But I've hand coded enough web sites over the years in notepad. Its the same thing. Here's screenshots of the flow.
1) Start the flow and get Base64 code for the two images I use in the HTML.
2) Create a bunch of other variables to hold different HTML fragments.
The top of the document must have this HTML
The rest of the variables are HTML building blocks. For example, here's the HTML fragment that starts the <Body> tag. Dynamic content is applied where needed. This header will only be used once in the document.
3) Now that we have the building blocks for the top and bottom of the document its time to buildout the detail lines. I create a loop counter so I can alternate the background colors of the rows to make them more readable. Then process each row using an Apply to each loop.
Odd versus even rows have slightly different styles but are otherwise identical. Here's what an odd row looks like. This inserts the dynamic content for that row and appends it to the Table Header variable.
4) Once all the rows are processed I close out the HTML table that I've been appending rows to. Then I concatenate the various fragments together, create the HTML file in OneDrive, and Convert it to PDF in memory, and save the PDF file to OneDrive.
Hi @Pstork1
I'm interested 😂. I've played with HTML to PDF in OneDrive and found the conversion hit and miss and had better luck with Word or Excel to PDF. If there is a trick to getting the format correct I would appreciate you sharing the tip.
Cheers,
Damien
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