How to Create PDF from Excel using Power Automate

This Power Automate Tutorial will show you how to create PDF from Excel using Power Automate. Here, I will show you the step-by-step guide to generate a PDF from an Excel sheet using Power Automate.

We recently received a request to create a PDF using an Excel sheet with Power Automate. That means, when a user uploads an excel report to a document library, it will convert the excel report into PDF, store it in a specific SharePoint document library, and remove that excel file from that library.

Table of Contents

Create PDF from Excel using Power Automate

Let’s see how to create a PDF from the excel sheet automatically using Power Automate. To create an automated cloud flow on the Power Automate, the following steps are:

• On the Power Automate, click on Create > Automated cloud flow.
• Provide a name to the flow and select the trigger ‘When a file is created (properties only)‘ under the SharePoint connector. Click on Create.

• Now the trigger is added to the flow environment. Provide the mandatory fields such as Site address and library name. Also, assign the folder path where you will upload the Excel files.
• Next, we will add another action that will retrieve the contents of a file by using its identifier. The contents can be copied and pasted elsewhere, or they can be used as an attachment.
• Click on the + New step > Get file content. Specify the SharePoint Site address and set the File identifier as Identifier (Select the value from the trigger’s dynamic content)

• Next, add a condition action to check whether the uploaded file is an excel or not. For that. click on the New step > Condition. Set the properties such as:
  • File name with extension contains .xls
  • Or
  • File name with extension contains .xlsx

  Note: Where ‘File name with extension‘ is taken from the trigger’s dynamic content.

  

  • As per the condition, if the uploaded file contains the specified values (i.e., .xls or .xlsx), then the flow will proceed forward. Inside the If yes section, click on the + add an action > Create file (under the OneDrive connector). Set the action’s properties as below:
    • Folder Path: Set the value as root (/) or specify a folder path.
    • File Name: File name with extension (Select the dynamic content value from the trigger’s output)
    • File Content: Select ‘File content‘ from the get file content‘s dynamic content.

    

    • Once the PDF file is created in OneDrive, add another action to create this PDF file in a SharePoint library.
    • Click on the Add an action > Create file (Under SharePoint connector). Provide the values to the mandatory properties such as site address, folder path, file name, and file content. Where file name and file content use the dynamic content values from the Convert file action.

    

    • Now, add another action to delete the excel file from the SharePoint folder where we uploaded it earlier.
    • Click on Add new action > Delete file. (Under the SharePoint connector). Provide the SharePoint site address and set the file identifier as Identifier from the trigger’s dynamic content.
    • Finally, we will add another action to delete the converted PDF from the secondary storage i.e., Onedrive. Click on the Add an action > Delete file (Under the OneDrive connector). Select Id from the Create file as File value.

    

    Now we can see the entire flow will look as shown below. You can download this flow from here How To Convert Excel Sheets To PDF Using Power Automate.

    

    Let’s save the flow and test it to see how it works. Click on Save > Test >Manually > run flow. For testing purposes, let’s upload an excel file in the desired library folder and we can see it will convert that excel file into PDF. Also, we will see it will remove the excel file from the library once it is converted to PDF.

    

    This is how to convert Excel to PDF in Power Automate.

    Conclusion

    From this Power Automate tutorial, we learned how to create a PDF from excel using an automated cloud flow.

    You may like the following Power Automate tutorials:

    • Create PDF from Microsoft Forms via Power Automate
    • Power Automate IF with Examples
    • Power Automate Create Document Library
    • Power Automate Create SharePoint List

    After working for more than 15 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Office 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (9 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.