Flow Help - Excel to PDF, then e-mail PDF to distribution list

[DanielGraham]

Hello.

I'm a newbie in all-things 'Flow'. I've tried getting to grips with a couple of tutorials, but can't find one that suits my needs... I'm unsure whether this is because nobody else is trying to do what I am doing, or whether it is because Office 365 simply isn't capable of doing what I'd like to do.

Nevertheless, I turn to the Power Users Community for assistance.

I work in the bus industry. It's a large company with over 600 vehicles based at around 8 different sites. Each morning, a member of the Engineering Team at each site fills in an Excel Spreadsheet which is shared from my own OneDrive account, indicating the vehicles which are unfit for service that day, why, and when each vehicle is expected to return to service.

The spreadsheet is the same file every day, but it is just updated each day with the content for that day.

At the moment, a member of the administration staff in our Head Office exports each sheet in the Excel Workbook out and saves the 10(ish) sheet workbook out as a combined PDF. Once this is done, a copy of the PDF is e-mailed out to a set distribution list, each morning, at around 09:30am.

What I'm looking to do in Flow is automate this process. I've read bits and pieces which seem to suggest something like this is possible, but I'm really not sure how to piece it all together.

So:

- for a selected file [navigate to file in my OneDrive]

- at time 09:30am

- save Excel Workbook as a PDF

- then send an e-mail to [list of people]

- attach a copy of the PDF which has just been saved.

Thanks in advance!

[v-xida-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @DanielGraham,

Do you want to execute the flow process at 09.30 am each day?

I think a Recurrence trigger could achieve your needs, I have made a test on my side and please take a try with following workaround:

• Add a Recurrence trigger, Interval set to 1 and Frequency set to Day. At these hours field set to 9 and At these minutes field set to 30.
• Add a "Convert file" action, File field set to your Excel file in your OneDrive folder, Target type set to PDF.
• Add a "Create file" action, specify Folder Path, File Name field set to File name dynamic content of "Convert file" action, File Content field set to File content dynamic content of "Convert file" action.
• Add a "Get file content" action, File field set to Id dynamic content of "Create file" action.
• Add a "Send an email" action, specify distribution list within To field, Attachments Name field set to Display name dynamic content of "Create file" action, Attachments Content field set to File content of "Get file content" action.

Image reference:

The flow works successfully as below:

Best regards,

Kris

[DanielGraham]

Hi @v-xida-msft

The concept worked brilliantly, and great to know that this kind of thing is possible, so thanks for that.

In practice, I'd like to look at making a couple of tweaks if that's possible.

The last sheet in the workbook I'm converting basically contains a fleet list - so it's the details about each vehicle, with each vehicle on a new row. As a result it's quite a large list, which, when converting to PDF, adds around 17 pages onto the PDF. The last sheet is necessary as it contains a number of key details such as depot and vehicle type, and we've got a VLOOKUP formula providing these details on each sheet so they don't have to be typed in by the engineers at each site.

Would this process be clever enough to exclude this sheet when converting the file?

One small issue as well, is that the PDF appears to be in landscape orientation? Ordinarily it's portrait (as this is how the spreadsheet is set up, I think?!)

[v-xida-msft]

Hi @DanielGraham,

If you want this process to be clever enough to exclude this sheet when converting the file, I afraid that there is no way to achieve your needs in Microsoft Flow currently. If you would like this feature to be added in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

In addition, the layout orientation of the PDF content is based on the layout of Excel table content, so if you want the layout orientation of your PDF content is portrait, please make sure the layout orientation of your Excel table content is portrait.

Best regards,

Kris

[DanielGraham]

Hi @v-xida-msft - turns out hiding the sheet in the workbook omits it from the PDF! So all sorted.

Thanks a lot for all of your help.

[DanielGraham]

Just picking up this again @v-xida-msft.

The page breaks in my Excel sheet were wrong initially (and were as shown when the Flow exported as PDF). I've now corrected this offline, and when I save as PDF directly from Excel, it shows the PDF as I'd expect it to show everything (portrait orientation).

I've are-uploaded a copy of this to my OneDrive, and ran the Flow again, but found the PDF exported via Flow still shows in landscape orientation opposed to the portrait orientation I see when saving as a PDF file direct from Excel 2013.

Any ideas?

[JohnMacDougall]

Can you clarify how you change the layout orientation of your Excel table content to portrait?

[Infiniti33]

Hello,

I am having this same issue. Can someone please address?

Thanks

[mhines]

Was this a hint towards how to resolve the issue with the PDF defaulting to landscape orientation? I've been looking everywhere for that solution as if I could find a way to make that stop and print portrait, I resolve a HUGE issue with a document conversation issue that dramatically impacts the office (but still not so much of a hassle that I can justify buying a 3rd-party PDF solution)

Details please!

[Lars-Jonelid]

Hi 

Have a similair problem, Iam working with excel sheets in sharepoint and want to have a flow started when I set it to publish status.

So FLOW should be like this  :  Excel-status-publish-create PDF - Send PDF   

Kind regards Lars 

[Anonymous]

I am receiving Convert File flow error . Status error code is  406

[doddytushar]

I am having the same issue as well regarding converted pdf defaulting to landscape orientation and not fitting data into one page. Was there a resolution to this. 

Does the conversion process to pdf considers all the page setup related instructions setup in excel? Additionally, is there a way to pass parameters to pdf conversion to manipulate pdf rendering

[RugerSR762]

Can Flow convert each worksheet within a workbook to individual PDF's?