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How to send a word document in response using Microsoft flows?

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Posted on by rsoni

I have a flow that creates a word document and sends it in the email to the users. Now, the users don't want to do an extra step opening the document through their email and they want to pop it open directly. Here is the workflow:

They click a button -> flow runs -> word document should pop up open.

is there a way to send a word document in response using Microsoft flows?

@SamPo ; @gamoraes

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Building flows

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Not sure what you mean "in response using a Flow".

If its an automated or recurrence trigger there is nothing to send a response back to.

If its a manual trigger then there is no provision in the calling app to display a Word document.

If its triggered manually from a Power App then you could return the document back to the Power App as encoded JSON suing the HTTP Response action. But there is no way for the Power App to display the document without saving it to SharePoint or OneDrive.

In short I don't think what you are suggesting is at all possible. The document needs to be either sent as an attachment or saved somewhere and sent as a link.

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rsoni 13 on at

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Thanks, @Pstork1 for answering. By "in response using a Flow" I meant using HTTP Response. Following is what I have done.
Note that the users use another web application, wherein the web UI of that application, they click a button, that sends an HTTP POST request, which triggers this flow. I intend to send the word doc in the HTTP response to that request. I am assuming that since I am using the Content-Disposition header of type attachment when the application receives the word doc in response, the browser will open the doc automatically (provided the application is invoking POST request from the front-end).
Now I am testing this HTTP post response using the "Send and Download" option in Postman, whereby I see the word file being downloaded. But I get the following error
Please note that the file opens correctly when sent as part of the email as an attachment.

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I'm not sure about this scenario, but when returning files from Flow to Power Apps as attachments you need to use a JSON object format that includes a Name: and ContentBytes: property. I assume you would need to do something similar here. But I'm not sure what the requirements are of the application on the receiving end for that.

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rsoni 13 on at

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You got it absolutely right.. I am trying to figure out the JSON Object format that I should be using. Any leads on that will be very helpful!

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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So this article shows how to put the JSON together to use as an attachment in email.

Power Automate - Send SharePoint files as attachments | Microsoft Docs

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