Microsoft Flow & Quick Parts
What does that title mean? Translation: Create a Microsoft Flow that will let people fill out a form and place the field values in specific spots of a Word document, so that it looks like a filled-out legal document (or any kind of document). Quick parts are not new. They’ve been around since SharePoint / Office 2010. This post is really just showing a way that they can be used in conjunction with Flow.
- Create a document library in SharePoint, and add new columns in the library, for each piece of information that you’d like to insert into your documents. In my example, I’m adding these text columns: Customer, Hours, TaxID
- Create a new Word document in that library, or if you already have an existing document to use as a template, upload it to your new library. Mine will be “SOW Library”.
- Once your document is in the library, then open it in MS Word. (NOT Word Online)
- In Word, go to the Insert tab. Click Quick Parts, and choose Document Property. From the list of document properties, you’ll see your library’s metadata. Click a property to insert it in your document.
- Go through the process of putting your cursor in your document in each spot that the value belongs, and insert Quick Parts wherever you need them. Here is an example. Note that my font here is red, but is typically gray by default.
- Save your file in place, and close Word. My file is called SOWtemplate.docx
- Go to Microsoft Flow. flow.microsoft.com, and create a new, blank Flow.
- Your trigger can be whatever you’d like it to be, but for this simple example, I’ll use a manual trigger, a button. In your manual trigger, create input parameters for each of the values you’re using in the document as quick parts.
Again, this is a simple example. Your Flow could be getting this information from a SharePoint list form, from Salesforce, or PowerApps. The objective of this post is to show you how data coming from *wherever* can be automatically inserted into a new Word doc. - After the trigger, your first action will be a SharePoint action called Get File Content. Remember that file you created at step 1? That is the file that you want to get.
- Add a SharePoint action to Create File. I just create mine right there in the same library, but of course, you could put it in a different library. For the File Name, I’m using the Customer from the manual input parameters. The File Content here is from the Get file content action.
- Add a SharePoint action to Update file properties. For the ID, I picked the ItemID from Create File. For the Customer, Hours, and TaxID, I used the 3 input parameters respectively. For the file’s Title, I went ahead and used the Customer parameter there as well. This step puts the metadata on that new file you created. Those other fields, I blurred out because they are irrelevant to this demo. At this point, you can save your flow, run it, and go to the library and see the new file there.
The deal with Quick Parts, unfortunately, is that they’re a little weird when using Word Online. The file looks fine when you open it up in the Word client software (on your computer), but in Word Online, the values don’t show in the Quick Parts. Here’s the trick. When people have read-only access to the file, the Quick Parts show correctly in Word Online, or when you preview the file. Also, when you send it in an email it looks fine. Here’s how to preview:
Then here’s what the file looks like:
- For this example statement of work, I want to email it out to the customer, so here’s how to add a couple more actions to the flow, to automatically email that new file. Add another SharePoint action, Get file content. Rename it to Get file content new file. For the File Identifier, use the ID from Create file.
- After that, add the Outlook action called Send an email (V2) (preview). To keep this one simple, I’m just sending the email to whomever manually triggered the Flow. In the subject, I mention the name of the customer (from my input parameters).
For the attachment name, use File name with extension, from the Update file properties section. For the File Content, get that from the Get file content new file section.
Side note: Another idea, is that you could add another (text) input parameter in step 1 called Customer Email. That way, this Flow could automatically send this to your customer. Don’t use the input parameter type called Email though, because it only allows input of people inside your organization. Use just a text one in order to type an email address of someone external.
Here are some more details from that attachments section…
And here is a screenshot of the whole thing:
Have fun Microsoft Flow’ing!
Here are a couple of references of much older posts that I’ve written in relation to Quick Parts:
Great post. Could this be done using a custom list instead of a document library? I have a similar need but all my information is contained in a sharepoint custom list.
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To spit out a document, though… you’d at least need to have a document library to use as a staging area, and the library would need to have all the same metadata as the list. Flow can even add the document as an attachment to your SP list item at the end, there’s an action for that.
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Excelent post! I’m developing a solution using quick parts, however when i try to save this document as PDF from Microsoft Flow using Plumsail it does not show the quick part data, only the tags 😦 Do you know any solution? Thanks in advace
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Thanks for this post. It came at the right moment. I have was looking for a solution with the same problem. I followed your instruction but when I send the e-mail the attachment still shows only the template and not the values. The Word document has all the values in it.
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The user you are sending the word document must have at lest read access to the document library or list where the values are saved. If is an external user, you could convert it to PDF (Muhimbi works for me) before send it.
Regards,
Carlos
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Thank you for this post! Are these quick parts also restricted to 255 characters only? Is there any way to copy data from a SharePoint column to the Word template if the data string is longer than 255 characters? I haven’t found a way to build the document using bookmarks and form fields only hold 255 max. Thank you in advance!
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I think it may be limited, but I haven’t tried doing that.
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Hello
eleanor,
I have the same problem, have you found a solution?
Stephane
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This is great! I was able sort of get this working with a list. However the resulting entry in the Doc Library has a blank icon (so it doesn’t appear to be any kind of file type). And it won’t open as a file. What do you think I’m doing wrong?
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I figured out that I had forgotten to add the .docx at the end of the file name! Geesh!
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This is awesome. Thank you! I have been able to get this to work with a list item creating the new file in a doc library. I have even been able to configure a doc library column as multiple lines of text with enhanced rich text (for bullet points). Unfortunately, my data is showing up with html tags in the quick part within the word doc. Is there any out of the box way to fix this?
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I have triggered this in PowerApps. I am getting a Flow failure “Action ‘Get file content’ failed”.
Error Details “The response is not in a JSON format”. Also when I open the template in Word Online, I cannot see any of the merge fields (I put a couple of test items in the template Library item record). I normally do these merges in MS Access directly from the SharePoint list, however your solution will be far better and more immediate if I can get it working.
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The template isn’t going to work in Word Online, but for this solution it doesn’t matter. Did you try this solution with a manual trigger instead of from PowerApps, like in the steps? I don’t know what kind of data is being sent from your PowerApp.
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Thanks for this. Very Informative post. However I have 2 questions
1. Can we do the same with an Excel File?
2. We like to use this for a Purchase Requisition. Where the PR Number and Date will be same however we may have 3 or 4 line items. How do we get all the line items to show as a table on the Word/Excel Document
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1. No.
2. You can’t with quick parts.
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Hi, after creating the file and update the file properties, I can only update document Title and have no other fields. Do you know why? Thank you.
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I’m having the same issue as Geir André, only document Title can be modified, and in my case I can also modify the document library’s required columns, but that should happen regardless of what file I’m working with.
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As long as you’ve created the metadata columns, from then on when you create a file directly in the library, then the fields should be there. I’m not sure how that could go wrong. Try different permutations of ways that you’re creating the file?
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Ok so the way I solved it was creating a new Document Type (with the hassle that entails), create a new Word document with that document type, populate fields inside the document and map them to the fields that are part of the document type.
It’s one of these typical convoluted SharePoint steps but I guess it makes some sense. Works like a charm now 🙂
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Great posting Laura. Was wondering whether I could insert list of item using this method? like a list of items procured or something in that nature
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No.
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I have created a SharePoint list with a flow attached to create a word document based on a template using the Document Property Quick Parts. Everything is working fine except if there has been no text entered into a field. The Word document shows the Quick Part Tags which I would like to be blank if no data is entered.
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