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Extracting dynamic content from a Word document into Excel

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Posted on by LewyJudge12

Hi all,

First post here but long time lurker to find solutions, so thanks in advance for the million times you have all helped me.

I'm currently working on a flow in which the user fills in a word document template, and uploads this as an attachment via Microsoft Forms. I am then taking this file and moving it to a new location, and then deleting the original file.

After that is where I'm stuck. I want to access that word document and take out the dynamic content and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. So for example:

Here I have Main Site in my word document template, the dynamic content area where the user types is named CurrentMainSite, and I want to link this up to the Current Main Site column in my Excel, but I can't see to find a way to access the content from my word document as dynamic content in my Flow.

Would anybody be able to assist?

This is my current flow:

I am using Parse JSON to get the attached files name, copy it to a new location and delete the original file. The part I'm struggling with it the two final steps "Get file content" and "Add a row into a table". I would have assumed Get file content would give me access to any dynamic content in my Word document, or is this not possible? There seems ot be minimal support for extracting FROM a .doc but lots for auto-population/generation.

Thanks in advance everyone!

Kind Regards,

Lewis

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v-jefferni on at

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Re: Extracting dynamic content from a Word document into Excel

Hi @LewyJudge12 ,

Get file content would only get binary data of the file, you will not be able to access the actual content of the file. If you would like to "read" the file and get the real content, please refer to below blog:

https://www.tachytelic.net/2021/05/power-automate-extract-text-from-word-docx-file/

Also, with the help of AI Builder form processing model, you will be able to retrieve data easily.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder/form-processing-model-overview

But honestly, I think it's still hard work for your scenario. One question I would ask: why not place the questions in the form and save the response to a word template to create the file in that new location directly? Then it will be easier to have the response details and add to the Excel worksheet.

Best regards,

Community Support Team _ Jeffer Ni
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it.

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LewyJudge12 2 on at

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Re: Extracting dynamic content from a Word document into Excel

Hi there! Thankyou for the reply. I will look into these links today and see what can be done.

Originally I did place the questions in the form and auto-populate the word document, however when the users start filling in the Microsoft Form they will already have the finished word document, and don't want to replicate work by having to re-enter data from their word document forms into Microsoft Forms repeatedly, so my thought process was to cut out any of the replication for the user by just simply uploading their already completed word document.

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