Creating a new Excel file populated based on Forms responses

[TTMan]

Hi all

I am new to Flow, so please bare with me if this is a basic question...

I have a scoping questionnaire in a MS Form, the responses to which will dictate if I ask a second set of related questions. So for example, if answer to Q1 = Yes, I will want to ask question subset A. What I am hoping is that I can use Flow to dynamically create the second questionnaire file, based on the responses in the Form. 

I have tried using the SharePoint "Create file" action, and adding a .xlsx or .xls extension to the dynamically assigned file name, but neither of the generated files open. Using a .csv extension works, but then I cannot use the "Get row" Excel action, to populate the .csv using my question bank, as Flow will not detect the csv file. 

Is there an easy way to create a new Excel file (xlsx format) on SharePoint using Flow? Or convert the csv? I tried using the Premium Cloudmersive connector to convert csv to xlsx, but my flow would always complete without generating a new file 😕 

Thanks in advance for any guidance

[v-alzhan-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @TTMan ,

I'm afraid that your requirement couldn't be achieved since there is no any way to create a new Excel file and insert row to in a single flow.

Best regards,

Alice       

Community Support Team _ Alice Zhang
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[TTMan]

Thanks for the reply Alice - I am surprised that something that can be achieved with a right click and a couple of context menu clicks cannot be achieved using this powerful tool! Maybe something for the roadmap. I will try figure out a workaround or alternate approach...

[CJbass]

Hello, I'm new to Flow as well, but working in it today I noticed that the Form has a Branching option.

Considering your need to ask a different set of questions, could you use this Branching feature to redirect the following questions down a different path?

[TTMan]

Thanks for the suggestion, however I have a requirement to create the secondary larger question set in Excel format. As a workaround I am currently using a pre-created blank spreadsheet hosted on SharePoint and then using "Get rows" and then "Add rows to table" (using ODATA filter queries in Flow) to meet my need - however it is still a work in progress

[SSM-SPARX]

Not sure if this is still open.

I recently realized for Cloudmersive you need to use the file content as input not the file itself.

The output will also be content so you'll have to create .xlsx file and use the output from the cloudmersive action as file content.

The problem that I have is date columns converted from CSV will show in the Excel formatted as Text which is not good for date filtering. I have opened a ticket with them to see if there's any solution to this.

[MarkIreland]

Hi,

My flow for creating a new Excel files is :-

Trigger (Manual for test)

Convert CSV to excel action.

       For both inputs place in " , , , ,"  (Remove ")

Then did a onedrive create file action with the output from above as file contents.

This gives you a vanilla file, you still need to create table, or worksheets etc etc

HTH

Mark