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adrianhoang997
Frequent Visitor

New to PowerApps - Migrating from Excel to PowerApps

Hey Community,

 

I'm currently exploring the possibility of migrating my Excel VBA model to Power Apps, and I have a few concerns. I'm new to the application so I'd greatly appreciate any advice or insights you can offer:

  1. Functionality Replication: Does Power Apps have a table-like structure similar to Excel where the user can copy and paste in values as inputs?

  2. Automatic Updates: Will Power Apps allow for automatic updates to the app itself? Currently, the model I have in Excel often has bugs so every time a new bug fix, I'd have to release a new version of Excel. The users would need to restart a new template for each update. Can you do a live update to the application with PowerApps?

  3. Logic and Calculations: How flexible is Power Apps in implementing logic like "if this then that" for calculations and decision-making?

  4. Generate Word and PowerPoint: I need the ability to generate deliverables for my clients. Currently, I have a Word and PPT template, and I'm using VBA to do find and replace the contents of the templates. Can Power Apps (maybe with PowerAutomate) generate Word and PowerPoint?

  5. Database Integration: How feasible is it to have validation input fields in Power Apps that query a database for closest matches as the user types? For example, one of the input fields is "Client". I want the user to pick from a pre-defined table. This table is residing in a SQL server.

Thanks for reading.

1 REPLY 1
RogierE
Solution Sage
Solution Sage

Hi @adrianhoang997

Welcome to the new world of opportunities of the PowerPlatform. In fact, if you would ask me, the Power Platform is the next level development of VBA with higher security and transparency, so in general I guess I could answer you that you will find anything that you created in VBA in the PowerPlatform in one way or another. And before I would answer your specific questions, I would like to propose that you just start with a few of your simple VBA applications before you choose whether or not migrate all of them. In my experience, with your first few Apps, you will soon get the hang of it. 🙂 

 

On your specific questions:

  1. Functionality Replication: PowerApps has Tables, Galleries and Forms for user input. Copy-pasting is possible, but not for whole cell ranges. And there is a good reason for that: in Excel, users can really mess up your table setup because they sometimes have too much freedom. This might take some time for you and your users to get used to, but helps a lot keeping your data quality high in the end.
  2. Automatic Updates: if you update your app, the users instantly get a notification that they are using the old version, and only need to refresh their browser to get to the latest version. 
  3. Logic and Calculations: your logics are as extensive as with VBA. PowerApps uses formulas in stead of a formal language, and there is more than enough logics and an extensive Formula reference - Power Apps - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
  4. Generate Word and PowerPoint: for this i would go to PowerAutomate. The Word connector was a premium connector, but turns out to be free nowadays Word Online (Business) - Connectors | Microsoft Learn. I have never created PWP with PowerAutomate, and as far as I know there is no connector for that. But I see that there are some workarounds: Solved: ,Re: Create a PowerPoint slide in power Automate - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)
  5. Database Integration: PowerApps can start simple and grow big. You can connect to the DataVerse if you want to (though this is a premium connector so some extra costs will apply). And you can also connect to any SQL server (this is also a premium connector). I would advise you to start simple, with the original Excel or a SharePoint list as a source for your App. 

Hope this helps. Don't hesitate to share any of your first efforts and raise any questions that you might have in starting up. 

 

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