20 Jul, 2026

How to Populate Dynamic Content Using Repeating Controls in a Word Document

Posted on 20 Jul, 2026 by Bharathi Siripuram, Posted in Microsoft Power Platform Power Automate Dynamics-365 Sales Dynamics 365

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Introduction:

Organizations frequently generate documents like invoices, certificates, quotations, transcripts, inspection reports etc. While single-value fields such as Name, Email, or Date are straightforward to populate, challenges arise when the document needs to display multiple related records dynamically - for example, several line items on an invoice or a list of uploaded documents in a report.

This is where Microsoft Word's Repeating Section Content Control, combined with Power Automate, becomes extremely powerful. Together, they let you generate polished, data-driven documents automatically, without manually copying rows or relying on fixed-size tables.

In this blog, we will walk through how to build a word template with a repeating control and connect it to power automate flow, so it populates dynamically from your data source.

Prerequisites:

1. Microsoft Word Desktop
2. Developer Tab enabled
3. Power Automate
4. SharePoint or OneDrive
5. Word Online (Business) connector

Step 1: Create Word Template

Start by building the base structure of your document.

• Insert a table to hold your repeating data
• Add Plain Text Content Controls for each field you want to populate
• Give each content control a clear, descriptive Title - this is how Power Automate will map data to the right field

Step 2: Create a Repeating Section Content Control

Once your table row is ready

• Select the entire row containing your content controls
• Go to the Developer tab
• Click Repeating Section Content Control
• Word will now treat that row as a repeatable block, meaning it can expand automatically to display as many rows as your data contains

Step 3: Build the Array in Power Automate

Your Word template needs an array of records to loop through, so the next step is to construct that array in your flow.

• Initialize an Array Variable
• Add an Apply to Each action, and inside it, use Append to Array Variable to build your dataset
• Each object in the array represents one row that will be rendered in your repeating section

Step 4: Populate the Microsoft Word Template

• Add the Populate a Microsoft Word Template action
• Select your Word template
• Map your array variable to the repeating section, and connect each field's dynamic value to the corresponding content control

Step 5: Generate the Document

Finally, complete the flow to turn your populated template into a finished, deliverable document

• Populate word template
• Create File - save the populated document
• Convert to PDF - optional, for a polished final format
• Send Email - optional, deliver the document to the relevant recipient

• Final created document which contains plain text control for account name and repeating content control for account related contacts is displayed as shown below:

Common Mistakes:

✗  Forgetting to keep JSON property names consistent with the Word content control titles

✗  Selecting only part of the row (instead of the full row) before applying the Repeating Section Content Control

✗  Leaving dates and numbers unformatted, expecting Word to format them automatically

✗  Hardcoding the template path instead of storing it centrally in SharePoint or OneDrive

Conclusion:

Repeating Section Content Controls make it remarkably easy to generate professional, dynamic documents from Dynamics 365 or any other data source. Whether you're dealing with one related record or a hundred, this approach scales cleanly, with no fixed-size tables, no manual editing, and no version drift between your data and your documents.