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Varzden's avatar
Varzden
Copper Contributor
Mar 09, 2023

Word quick parts - issues with managed metadata when converting word to pdf

Hello everyone,

I am having an odd issue which I am not sure how to deal with. I have a site (SharePoint Online) with document sets and different content types. Within document sets I create various Word documents which I fill with data using Word Quick parts (data from columns). Everything seems to work fine until I export the file to PDF via Microsoft flow (when I open the original Word files, everything is filled in correctly). Most of the time, all the information is filled in, except of 2 quick parts, which are basically filled with managed metadata. For some reason, only these 2 are not getting the information, even thought the original Word document has those filled in (I basically take the same document and convert it to PDF file). I am not sure why this is happening. Also, one of my former colleagues has created a custom functionality to create PDF files directly on SharePoint (not using Flow), but the same thing happens. The only way when all data is filled in PDF document is when you convert file directly from word using File --> Export --> Create PDF. From what I see, it seems that in this process, quick parts have the issue with column types of managed metadata, as the other ones work as expected.

If anyone has any idea why this happens, I would much appreciate it.

  • sammysword's avatar
    sammysword
    Copper Contributor

    Varzden 

     

    Did you ever get a solution to this? I'm running into the exact same issue now but haven't managed to find a solution

    • Varzden's avatar
      Varzden
      Copper Contributor
      Hello,
      In the end, I changed the workflow for some other reasons, so the users do the export to PDF trough word directly. However, I noticed that this would happen when the Word document wasn't opened in app before conversion (if I started to convert directly, without opening a document in the desktop app at any point before conversion).
      • sammysword's avatar
        sammysword
        Copper Contributor
        Thank for coming back to me. Yes this is the conclusion I had too. If the users open the document in the desktop app, make any change and then save and close, this would then let Power Automate correctly convert to PDF with all the managed metadata fields included.

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