Data entry from Excel using Power Automate Desktop 

RPA is an advanced form of business process automation that can record tasks performed by a human on their computer, then perform those same tasks without human intervention. With tools like Power Automate Desktop, it is possible to automate data entry from Excel using Power Automate Desktop, which acts as a virtual robot copycat.”   

RPA can be achieved by using Power Automate Desktop Flow which can record the task that is needed to be performed on the computer or We can create a New Desktop flow and can add actions that should be performed on the computer or Webpage.  

In the real-world use cases there are some scenarios where we want to fill up the online form in the bulk, this requires the human efforts where user must fill up the same form again and again. This process can be automated using the power automate desktop where the data to be fill up can be maintained in the excel and power automate desktop can read each of these record from the excel and fill up the online form.  

In this blog I will discuss about how to fill up the online data entry form from excel the excel using Power Automate Desktop. In order to demonstrate this process, I have taken the example of the Microsoft form where I created the Student Details forms with following fields and below is the screenshot of the form. 

1. Full Name 
2. Gender  
3. Phone Number  
4. Address

Now for online data entry, I have created an excel with name student list and added the following records shown in below screenshot: 

Now we move towards the Desktop flow where in the first step we need to launch the Excel and we need to pass the location of the Excel file in the Document path Tab. This step will create the output with variable name “ExcelInstance” which will store all the retrieved from the Excel file. 

The Next step is to read the Excel data with “Read from Excel worksheet” action which accepts the Excel instance as input parameter and produces the output variable with the name “ExcelData” 

In the “Close Excel” action we need to provide the name of the excel instance that we want to close. 

After reading the data from the excel the variable “ExcelData” will show the following data. 

Next step is to launch the browser. In the “Lauch new Microsoft Edge” action we need to provide the URL of the site here in this case I have passed the URL of the Microsoft form. 

In order to read the data from Excel file we need to apply for each loop in “For each” action we need to provide the variable name where we have stored the excel data which is “ExcelData” in this case. 

In “Populate text field on web page” action we need to pass the UI Element where we want to populate full name of the student and for text to populate, we need to pass Current item’s Full name.  

In order to select the Gender, we need to apply the if condition for checking if the gender value is Male or Female, if the value in Excel is Male then radio button Male should be selected and if the value in the Excel is Female then radio button for the Female should be selected. 

For adding phone number and address we need to use the same action “Populate text field on the web page” and pass the corresponding data. 

For submitting another response, we need the select the “Press button on web page” action and we need to pass UI Element. 

And finally for closing the browser we use “Close web browser” action to close the current browser instance. 

After adding all the actions inside the flow, the power automate desktop flow looks like as given below. 

Conclusion: 

In this blog post I have demonstrated the use of Power Automate flow for filling the online data entry form using Excel as data source.  

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