Implementing translations to canvas apps with Excel and JSON

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Posted on by VilPel

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Hi community,

I am building a canvas app that's pretty large. Previously, I used a Power Apps component library to store translations of labels for different languages following this tutorial: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/canvas-apps/multi-language-apps. It worked fine until I had 1300+ translations for 2 different languages and the component library became really, really slow to edit and publish.

I have now decided to take Excel as the top alternative for the component library. Other users could easily manage it and it's much easier to use overall than Power Fx.

So far, my solution is the following:

Translations created in Excel for 2 languages (in the future more languages are easy to add as new columns)

The Excel is imported to a canvas app and the data loaded into a variable as follows (Table1 is the Excel table). This is now an UntypedObject in Power Apps.

Set(
    lblSample,
    ParseJSON(
        "{" & Concat(Table1, JSON(Key) & ": " & JSON(en), ", ") & "}",UntypedObject
    )
);

I am then referring to all my text labels such as varSample.lblApproval, varTranslatedLabel.lblDetails, etc. This is something I want to keep because my main app has thousands of labels and I don't want to change the way how the translation is referenced in them.

The problem is the UntypedObject. I want all my labels in the app to be text type. I could just use the Text() function but then I have to do that in thousands of places so it's not viable.

How could I convert my variable to a recognizable object without having to change so many things in the app?

Thanks in advance!

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Building Power Apps

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MS.Ragavendar 6,334 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@VilPel,

On the App (On Start) Property - try setting the value

Set(

lblSampleTemplate,

{

lblApproval: "",

lblDetails: "",

lblPeople: "",

lblRelations: "",

// Add other columns accordingly.

}

);

On Respective Screen visible

Set(

lblSample,

Patch(

lblSampleTemplate,

With(

{

_parsed: ParseJSON(

"{" & Concat(

Table1,

JSON(Key) & ": " & JSON(ThisRecord[varLanguage])

) & "}"

)

},

{

lblApproval: Text(LookUp(RecordFieldValues(_parsed), Name = "lblApproval").Value),

lblDetails: Text(LookUp(RecordFieldValues(_parsed), Name = "lblDetails").Value),

lblPeople: Text(LookUp(RecordFieldValues(_parsed), Name = "lblPeople").Value),

lblRelations: Text(LookUp(RecordFieldValues(_parsed), Name = "lblRelations").Value),

// Add other columns accordingly.

}

)

)

);

🏷️ Please tag me @MS.Ragavendar if you still have any queries related to the solution or issue persists.

✅ Please click Accept as solution if my post helped you solve your issue and help others who will face the similar issue in future.

❤️ Please consider giving it a Like, If the approach was useful in other ways.

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ronaldwalcott 3,862 Moderator on at

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Out of curiosity, why use JSON?

I tried simulating this using a collection

ClearCollect(colTranslations,

{Key: "Greeting1", English: "Hello", Spanish: "Hola", French: "Bonjour"},

{Key: "Farewell1", English: "Goodbye", Spanish: "Adiós", French: "Au revoir"}

);

Set(UserLanguage, Language());

ClearCollect(

TranslationsCollection,

AddColumns(

colTranslations,

Translation,

Switch(

UserLanguage,

"en-US", English,

"fr", French,

"es", Spanish,

English // Default fallback

)

)

);

and was wondering if there is a problem with my approach that I am not understanding.

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