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How to conditionally pass an empty array?

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Posted on by BCBuizer

22,654 Super User 2026 Season 1

Hi All,

I'm building a flow to populate a Word template. The template contains some fields that are optional which I want to hide when the value is null.

To achieve this I'm trying using to use repeating sections in the template as suggested in this blog: https://joelblogs.co.uk/2021/06/28/microsoft-flow-tip-1-word-templates-and-hiding-empty-repeating-sections/. Basically this says to pass a blank array to a repeating section in the "Populate a Microsoft Word template" action to hide it.

This all works fine, but how do I pass an empty array if the value of the item inside the array is null?

I have tried the below for the input of the field connected to the repeating section, but apparently the expression is invalid:

[

 if(
	equals(
		outputs('Get_item')?['body/OptionalField'],
		null
	),
	null,
	"OptionalField": outputs('Get_item')?['body/OptionalField']
 )

]

Looking forward to your ideas/solutions!

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Expiscornovus 33,830 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @BCBuizer,

Have you tried replacing null by '[]' in the if part of your expression?

Try something like the below:

if(equals(outputs('Get_item')?['body/OptionalField'],null), '[]', outputs('Get_item')?['body/OptionalField'])

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BCBuizer 22,654 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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HI @Expiscornovus ,

In my case I have a text content control inside the repeating section, hence the need to pass a key-value pair. The reason for this is that I don't want the section to even show up in the populated document.

Using your expression I got a blank array in case the value was blank, but I couldn't get the populated array to return correctly:

if( equals( outputs('Get_item')?['body/OptionalField'], null ), '[]', '[{"OptionalField": outputs('Get_item')?['body/OptionalField']}]' )

I ended up using a Filter Array function to filter out the item in case the value was null and use the outputs to populate the template:

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