Hi, welcome back. This is our third leg of the low-code journey, designed to empower you to break away from repetitive tasks, create your solutions, and focus on what really matters. If you missed our previous lessons, be sure to look at these posts:
- “Never miss an important email from your boss!”
- “I want to create my own tech solutions, but I am not a coder. Where do I begin?”
I also recommend our post called “I want to develop an app, but…”
As always, be sure to follow the Microsoft 365 Champions category 🏅 in this blog. You will pick up valuable information and tips on how Microsoft 365 can help you with teaching, learning, work and personal life, and how to become a hero with your peers as you share your newly acquired powers. 🦸♀️🦸♂️️
Listen to a recording of this post:
In this episode, we will address a time-consuming problem that should have a solution out there. Whether you are a faculty member, a student, or staff, you may find yourself in need of converting multiple, if not piles, of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents into PDFs for distribution and sharing. Now, this could be done by opening the file, choosing print, and selecting PDF as your output; but doing this over and over and over is not my idea of fun or a productive day. Thankfully, again, there is a way to automate this process with another low-code solution available to you through Power Automate.
What you will need:
- Your NetID
- Documents in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint
- Web browser
- OneDrive
- Power Automate
Building your document transformer 🙂
In this build, we will follow some of the same procedures used in the two previous builds. We will start by setting up a space in OneDrive. OneDrive is part of your Microsoft 365 account provided by the university. There we will create a set of folders. There should be one general container, and within it, one folder holds the files to be transformed into PDF, and another folder to receive the files in PDF format. Then we will go to Power Automate and find a template that will let us build the solution in a short few minutes. So let’s get rolling. 🏁
Building the Flow
Now you will build your flow by logging in to Power Automate and again, like last time, you will search the templates section. In this case, your search term will be “PDF.” You will find a great number of solutions, and in this case, we will be using one called Convert a file to PDF using OneDrive for Business.
You will fire up that template, and after the usual checks for authorization to use all the necessary elements of the automation, you will need to do some customization of the flow, making sure that you choose the “Files to be Converted” folder in the beginning block, the trigger area, and choose the “Converted Files” folder in the ending block of the flow.
Testing your build:
Once finished, upload your sample files or others into the “To Be Converted” folder and go about your business. Let the system run, and after a few minutes, go check your “Converted Files” folder. You can get your PDFs from there.
🚩 NOTE: This process is designed for Microsoft Office file types. It sometimes works with other file types but be sure to test it before you invest a lot of time with untested formats.
Bonus Features:
You can get additional functionality by:
- Mounting the Converter Folders on your desktop so you do not need your browser to drop them into the “To Be Converted” folder and can easily retrieve them from the “Converted Files” folder.
- Edit the Automation to send you an email and/or a mobile notification once the process is completed.
Dr. Carlos Solís is Associate Vice President of the Technology Innovation Office.
