How to auto-populate a Word document based on user inputs?

Question

The problem.

Our company has various statement of work which they use before submitting a proposal. These statement of work are stored in a company share point site. A lot of these statements of work have a constant part i.e a template repeated across many different word documents, and a variable part. For example, how many consultants will be needed (static) and answer for example 5 (has to be filled by the user). Moreover, different statement of work has different templates across businesses. So to summarise the flow will go something like this.

Requirement

1. The user is presented a view with various questions.
2. The user selects the options which presents them the layout of the statement of work appropriate for that line of business.
3. The user then answers a few questions to fill the dynamic part. A statement of work is populated with those dynamic fields.
4. The final output is a Word document filled with the the options the user selected.

Is there any existing tools or solutions I can use to achieve these requirements. Ideal to have with be something with a routing and approval process as well so different managers can sign off on the statement of work that has been edited. Ideally we would like to automate the entire process.

Thank you for reading this.

Answer 1

You could try Microsoft's Power Automate. You can do pretty much anything you'd want involving documents with it, and it's a bit more drag-and-drop than VBA, you'll find many standard steps already made that you can link together into a flow.

For example this tutorial explains how to customise word templates with fields that you can auto populate with Power Automate. Link that up to a form for data entry and you can do it all from a phone app. It integrates well with sharepoint.

That's where I'd start, this YouTube playlist will teach you the basics.