Using Power Automate to extract SharePoint list to table in word

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by GW-09032042-0

Hi All,

new to Power Automate and undertaking a course on Udemy. Managing most things quite well and can extract data to tables in Excel, amongst other things, but ideally, I would prefer to extract to a Word doc as I need to use data in various reports to the Board and Senior management.

I have followed various instructions from sites, followed YouTube videos etc and am 100% confident that I have set up the table in Word as required with Plain Text Controls for each cell as well as inserting a repeating row section, and have tried lots of times. But I keep getting an error message to say that Template requirements in word doc are not defined. But I know for a fact they are. The flow even lets me map to the repeating section with the various fields, but when I test the whole flow it just does not work.

I have tried with the Word doc housed in OneDrive and/or various SharePoint libraries but I just cannot get this to work

I have managed to create an array to extract the SharePoint list to a HTML page in chrome and then I can copy the text out etc, but this will be come laborious once my SharePoint lists start expanding.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.

thank you in advance

Greg

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (2)

Answers (0)

Suggested answer

Sunil Kumar Pashikanti 1,353 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @GW-09032042-0,

This error usually means your Word template technically looks correct, but the Repeating Section Content Control isn’t actually bound to a mapped XML part the way Power Automate requires. The Word connector only works if every Plain Text control AND the repeating row control are attached to a custom XML part created automatically by the “Populate a Microsoft Word template” action.

Common causes:

The Repeating Section was added before inserting any content controls → Word doesn’t bind it.
Content controls were copied/pasted → breaks XML mapping.
Table uses merged cells → Word connector rejects it.
Template was saved as .doc instead of .docx.
The repeating section surrounds the wrong level of the table (must wrap the whole row, not individual cells).

Quick fix steps:

Create a new blank Word file (.docx).
Insert a 3–4 column table WITHOUT merged cells.
Insert Plain Text Content Controls for each cell.
Select the entire table row, then insert the Repeating Section Content Control.
Save to OneDrive (Word template) — most reliable.
Reinsert the template into Power Automate → verify new fields appear.

This fixes the “Template requirements are not defined” error 99% of the time. Please give it a try and let us know if it help!

✅ If this answer helped resolve your issue, please mark it as Accepted so it can help others with the same problem.
👍 Feel free to Like the post if you found it useful.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
GW-09032042-0 2 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi Sunil, really appreciate the quick response, but none of the tables I have tried to use have ever had merged cells. They have all been separate cells.

As you can see from the attached, i have used two rows only so far, all unmerged. The top row is header row and the whole of the 2nd row is the "repeating" row and each of the cells holds a plain text control. All fields use the logical names assigned to the SharePoint list

Since my original post, I have seen some success in creating separate word files for each line of data, and this function will be useful for some work I will be doing. But I am still unable to pull the whole SP list into one table in one Word doc.

Thank you

MondayNightTest.docx

Was this reply helpful? Yes No