Your Digital Assistant: 62 Power Automate Desktop Ideas to Eliminate Tedious Work

Power Automate Desktop is a desktop automation tool released by Microsoft in 2018 that allows anyone to automate repetitive and time-consuming manual processes on their local PC.

Unlike browser-based Power Automate which focuses on cloud workflows, Power Automate Desktop is optimized for on-premises legacy systems and desktop PC tasks. It provides a versatile canvas for building automated workflows that integrate applications, data, and systems.

Power Automate Desktop is available for Windows PCs through a free download from Microsoft and does not require any dedicated licensing. Anyone can leverage it to boost their personal productivity or digitally transform business processes.

Some key differences compared to standard Power Automate are:

• Runs natively on desktop, not web-based
• Legacy on-prem connectors like Excel, file system
• Advanced UI automation capabilities
• Built-in approval capabilities
• Full offline support
• No licensing required
• Flows run locally, not in the cloud

With Power Automate Desktop, anyone can adopt desktop automation to eliminate repetitive manual processes involving legacy systems, desktop software, data transfers and more.

However, until the possibilities are brought to life with real world examples, it is hard to understand why Power Automate Desktop exists or what it could do for you.

So Let's explore the top 10 use cases and examples:

Automate data entry from PDFs

There are many scenarios where you might want to use Power Automate Desktop to automate data entry from PDFs. Here are some examples:

• Data processing: If you work in a field that requires you to process large amounts of data from PDF documents, such as finance, accounting, or research, you can use Power Automate Desktop to extract the data and enter it into your applications. This can save you a lot of time and effort, and reduce the risk of errors.
• Form processing: If you need to process forms that are submitted in PDF format, such as job applications or customer feedback forms, you can use Power Automate Desktop to extract the data and enter it into your database or CRM system. This can help you streamline your workflow and improve your response time.
• Invoice processing: If you receive invoices in PDF format from your suppliers or vendors, you can use Power Automate Desktop to extract the data and enter it into your accounting system. This can help you keep track of your expenses and payments more efficiently.
• Report generation: If you need to generate reports based on data from multiple PDF documents, such as sales reports or financial statements, you can use Power Automate Desktop to extract the data and enter it into your reporting tool. This can help you create accurate and up-to-date reports more quickly.

These are just a few examples of how Power Automate Desktop can be used to automate data entry from PDFs. The possibilities are endless! 😊

As with all of these actions one of the best tools in Power Automate Desktop to help you build your flow is the Screen Recorder, you can use the Recorder in Power Automate Desktop to record your actions and automatically generate a flow. The recorder can copy your actions in browsers and applications and create flows for you. You can use the recorder to generate actions that automate local Windows UI-based tasks, as well as interactions with a web browser. You can preview and edit the automatically generated actions during and after the recording.

Here are some of the other main actions in Power Automate Desktop that would be useful for automating data entry from PDFs:

• Extract ...From PDF - These actions and other related PDF actions let you extract text, images, and tables from a PDF file. It's the starting point for parsing a PDF.
• Extract Text - This extracts the text from a PDF or image into an output variable that can be manipulated. Useful for isolating relevant text.
• Data Operations - Actions like Filter Array, Select, Compose, Parse JSON allow you to extract and format relevant fields from the PDF text.
• Conditionals - Using If conditions and Switch cases allows you to build logic to handle variability in the source PDFs.
• Loops - ForEach and Until loops help process multi-page PDFs and loop through arrays of extracted data.
• Write to Excel - The Write Range action is used to output the extracted PDF data into Excel for further analysis.
• Data Types - Using variables, arrays, dictionaries and objects helps organize and transform the PDF data.
• Browser Tools - Browser automation helps navigate websites and can submit data into web forms.

So in summary, the key actions involve using Get PDF Content, Extract Text, data manipulation, conditional logic, loops, and browser tools to take data from a PDF and output it to Excel or web form.

Automate Excel Reports

There are many real-world scenarios where you might want to automate Excel reports using Power Automate Desktop. Here are some examples:

• Data processing - If you work in a field that requires you to process large amounts of data, such as finance, accounting, or research, you can use Power Automate Desktop to automate the generation of Excel reports. This can save you a lot of time and effort, and reduce the risk of errors.
• Report generation - If you need to generate reports based on data from multiple sources, such as sales reports or financial statements, you can use Power Automate Desktop to extract the data and enter it into an Excel file. This can help you create accurate and up-to-date reports more quickly.
• Data analysis - If you need to analyze data and generate insights, such as customer behavior or market trends, you can use Power Automate Desktop to automate the process of importing data into Excel and generating charts and graphs. This can help you make better decisions based on data-driven insights.

To automate Excel reports, get Excel data, build a dynamic table, and email the report using Here are some of the actions you would need to use to achieve this:

• Launch Excel or Attach to running Excel -These actions allow you to launch a new instance of Microsoft Excel or attach to a running instance of Microsoft Excel1.
• Read from Excel worksheet - This action reads data from an Excel worksheet and stores it in a data table variable1.
• Write to Excel worksheet - This action writes data to an Excel worksheet.
• Resize columns/rows in Excel worksheet - This action resizes columns or rows in an Excel worksheet.
• Run Excel macro - This action runs a specified macro on the document of an Exce instance.
• Send an email - This action sends an email with the report as an attachment.

Scrape website data and write to an Excel File.

Here are some real-world examples where scraping website data into Excel would be useful:

• Competitive pricing - Scrape prices from competitor websites to get pricing data into a spreadsheet for analysis. Useful for pricing optimization.
• Product research - Scrape product specs, reviews, ratings from shopping sites into an Excel dataset. Helps analyze product trends.
• Social media monitoring - Scrape mentions, comments, tags from social networks into Excel. Used for sentiment analysis, influencer tracking etc.
• Directory building - Scrape business listings from directories like Yellow Pages into Excel to build sales prospecting lists.
• Real estate analysis - Scrape real estate listings and property data into spreadsheets for easy filtering and analysis.
• Weather data - Collect weather records over time by scraping historical weather websites into an Excel data set.
• Stock data - Pull end of day stock prices from finance websites into Excel for charting and modeling stock performance.
• Lead generation - Scrape contact info from business websites into Excel to build lead/contact lists.
• Recruitment - Scrape job listings/resumes from recruiting sites and compile into Excel. Useful for recruiters.

The key benefit is getting unstructured web data into a structured Excel format for easier analysis, dashboarding, modeling, tracking etc. across many business functions.

Here are some of the key actions you would need to use to achieve this:

• Launch new browser instance - This action launches a new instance of a web browser.
• Extract data from web pag -: This action extracts data from a web page and stores it in a variable or an Excel sheet.
• Launch Excel - This action launches a new instance of Microsoft Excel.
  Attach to running Excel: This action attaches to a running instance of Microsoft Excel.
• Read from Excel worksheet - This action reads data from an Excel worksheet and stores it in a data table variable.
• Write to Excel worksheet - This action writes data to an Excel worksheet.

Syncranise data between systems

Here are some real-world scenarios where using Power Automate Desktop to sync data between systems would be helpful:

• Syncing data from CRM to ERP - Keep customer data in sync between sales systems and financial systems.
• Syncing product data from ecommerce to inventory - Keep inventory levels updated in the warehouse as online orders occur.
• Syncing user accounts between systems - Helpdesk to HR system, or SSO systems to quickly replicate new users.
• Syncing orders between payment gateways - Keep payment records in multiple systems in sync when orders processed.
• Mirroring datasets between analytic systems - Replicate datasets from data warehouse to departmental Power BI for reporting.
• Transferring data from on-prem to cloud - Migrate local datasets to the cloud incrementally.
• Consolidating data between departments - Centralizing data from department SharePoint/File Shares to company-wide systems.
• Aggregating data to data lake - Pulling data from distributed systems into a central data lake.
• Backup/archiving data - Replicating data from cloud to on-prem systems for backups.

The key benefit is automating the transfer of data between systems that don't have native integration or APIs. This removes manual export/import efforts

Here are some of the key actions you may need to use to achieve this:

• Launch new application - This action launches a new instance of an application.
• Attach to running application - This action attaches to a running instance of an application.
• Read from file - This action reads data from a file and stores it in a variable.
• Write to file - This action writes data to a file.
• Copy file - This action copies a file from one location to another.
• Move file - This action moves a file from one location to another.

Parse inbound emails

Here are some real-world scenarios where using Power Automate Desktop to parse inbound emails and extract details into SharePoint or into an Excel file could be useful:

• Customer Service - Automatically extract info like customer name, account #, issue details from support emails into SharePoint list to create tickets.
• Lead Generation - Parse out contact info from sales inquiry emails to auto-populate SharePoint list to track leads.
• Surveys - Extract survey responses from completed web forms/emails and log them to SharePoint for analytics.
• Reporting - Pull data like sales numbers, status updates from emailed reports into SharePoint lists for centralized tracking.
• Event Registrations - Parse out info like name, company, dietary preferences from emailed RSVPs into SharePoint event tracker.
• Financial Data - Extract transaction details, amounts from emailed invoices into SharePoint for accounting.
• Travel Arrangements - Parse travel confirmations for dates, destinations, lodging details into SharePoint tracker.
• Legal Notices - Extract key details from emailed legal notices like lawsuits, subpoenas into SharePoint records.

The main benefit is automatically extracting unstructured email data into structured SharePoint lists without manual data entry. This helps centralize information from emails for easier reporting, tracking, analysis.

Here are some key Power Automate Desktop functionality that you may find useful for parsing inbound emails and extracting details into SharePoint:

• When a new email arrives: This trigger runs each time an email arrives.
• Splitting by Newline: This action will give you each line in a separate line item and then in that row, if a specific text is found, you can apply the desired action.
• Regular Expressions: You can use regular expressions for more flexibility when extracting text.
• Convert the Html table to text: This action will help you split out the entire body to get the actual content from the email.
• Store the actual content in the SharePoint list or Excel File: There are a number of SharePoint actions you can take advantage of in Power Automate Desktop, however they are part of the premium licence.  The Excel group of actions are available with standard licence, we discussed some of these earlier in this post.

These actions should help you achieve your goal of automatically extracting unstructured email data into structured SharePoint lists without manual data entry, which helps centralize information from emails for easier reporting, tracking, and analysis.

Working with and Formating documents

Here are some real-world examples where using Power Automate Desktop to automate Word document formatting could be useful:

• Branding - Have new documents adopt company styles for fonts, colors, logos etc.
• Templates - Apply standardized templates for documents like reports, proposals, letters etc.
• Bulk Changes - Make sweeping formatting changes across multiple documents.
• Compliance - Apply required redactions, watermarks, footers to sensitive documents.
• Localization - Transform documents for new languages/regions with translated text, date formats etc.
• Accessibility - Add required attributes for screen readers, increase contrast for vision impaired.
• Quality Control - Fix formatting issues in bulk like bad break pages, fonts, widows/orphans.
• Data Documents - Populate dynamic documents from data sources, applying formats.
• Archival - Prepare older documents for records management with optimized PDF output.
• Cleanup - Remove tracked changes, comments, personal info from documents before sharing.

The main benefit is saving time by automating repetitive formatting work at scale across high document volumes.

Some of the main features and actions within Power Automate Desktop that you would need to be aware of to achieve these use cases are:

• Word Automation - Word Automation is a feature that allows you to interact with Word documents and applications using various actions, such as Open Word Document, Save Word Document, Close Word Document, Insert Text, Set Font, etc. You can use these actions to automate tasks such as opening files, saving files, inserting text, applying styles, etc.
• Variables and Expressions - Variables and Expressions are features that allow you to store and manipulate data in your Power Automate Desktop flow. You can use variables of different types, such as text, number, boolean, list, or table. You can also use expressions to perform calculations, comparisons, conversions, etc. You can use these features to automate tasks such as storing data from sources, applying logic, transforming data, etc.
• Loops and Conditions - Loops and Conditions are features that allow you to control the flow of your Power Automate Desktop flow. You can use loops to repeat a set of actions for a certain number of times or until a condition is met. You can use conditions to execute different actions based on the outcome of an expression. You can use these features to automate tasks such as iterating over multiple documents, applying templates, making bulk changes, etc.

Automate invoice processing

Here are some real-world scenarios where automating invoice processing with Power Automate Desktop could be useful:

• Accounts Payable - Extract vendor, amount, due date from PDF/scanned invoices and update accounting system.
• Expense Reporting - Parse receipt details from emailed expense receipts and create entries in the ERP.
• Bill of Lading Processing - Extract purchase order details from shipping bills of lading for order reconciliation.
• Mortgage Processing - Parse loan details from lender invoices to auto-populate loan origination system.
• Insurance Claim Processing - Extract claim amounts, dates, policy numbers from mailed claim forms to create system entries.
• Healthcare Billing - Parse patient billing details from medical invoices to automatically update billing system.
• Hotel Folio Processing - Extract room number, charges, dates from PDF folios to post to the PMS.
• Rental Property Management - Parse rental payment info from scanned checks to automatically log in property management system.
• Retail Invoicing - Extract purchase data from retail paper receipts to update POS and accounting systems.

Automating the extraction of key invoice data for posting to back-end systems saves huge amounts of manual data entry time and errors.

Here are some of the main features and actions within Power Automate Desktop that you would need to be aware of to achieve these use cases are:

• OCR - Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a feature that allows you to extract text from images, PDFs, or scanned documents. You can use the OCR Text action to specify the source file or URL, the language, and the output variable to store the extracted text.
• Text Analysis - Text Analysis is a feature that allows you to perform natural language processing tasks on text, such as sentiment analysis, key phrase extraction, entity recognition, or language detection. You can use the Text Analysis action to specify the text, the API key, the endpoint, and the output variable to store the analysis results.
• Data Extraction - Data Extraction is a feature that allows you to extract structured data from unstructured or semi-structured text, such as invoices, receipts, forms, etc. You can use the Data Extraction action to specify the text, the extraction model ID, the API key, the endpoint, and the output variable to store the extracted data.
• Web Automation - Web Automation is a feature that allows you to interact with web pages and web applications using various actions, such as Navigate to URL, Click Web Element, Set Web Element Text, Get Web Element Text, etc. You can use these actions to automate tasks such as filling forms, submitting data, scraping information, etc.
• Desktop Automation - Desktop Automation is a feature that allows you to interact with desktop applications and windows using various actions, such as Launch Application, Click UI Element, Set UI Element Text, Get UI Element Text, etc. You can use these actions to automate tasks such as opening files, entering data, copying information, etc.

Schedule report generation

Here are some scenarios where using Power Automate Desktop to automate scheduling and emailing reports could be useful:

• Daily Sales Report - Compile sales data overnight from CRM and email to managers.
• Weekly Inventory Report - Build report showing stock levels and inventory KPIs for warehouse team.
• Monthly KPI Reports - Connect to data sources and autogenerate executive dashboard of key metrics.
• Daily Production Report - Collect manufacturing data and generate production report for plant leadership.
• Daily Website Analytics - Scrape analytics data into a report on web traffic and engagement.
• Weekly Social Media Insights - Build reports on social campaigns and listener demographics.
• Monthly Investor Update - Sync investment data and create a performance report for stakeholders.
• Daily Data Backup Report - Compile backup logs and system health data into IT admin report.
• Weekly Forecast - Connect forecast data from multiple systems into report for sales team.
• Daily Customer Support Report - Create report on support ticket metrics for customer success team.

Automating report generation and distribution eliminates the need for manual creation and emailing which can be quite time consuming.

Here are some of the key functional areas of Power Automate Desktop that are worth while investigating further if you are interested in implementing these use cases:

• SaaS actions - These actions allow you to connect to and interact with various cloud-based services, such as Salesforce, Dynamics 365, SharePoint, etc. You can use these actions to get or send data from or to these services, or perform other operations such as creating, updating, or deleting records.
• Excel actions - These actions allow you to work with Excel workbooks, worksheets, cells, ranges, tables, charts, etc. You can use these actions to create, open, save, close, or manipulate Excel files, or perform calculations, formatting, filtering, sorting, etc.
• Email actions - These actions allow you to connect to and interact with email servers and messages. You can use these actions to send or receive emails, download or upload attachments, mark messages as read or unread, delete messages, etc.
• Database actions - These actions allow you to connect to and interact with various databases, such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, etc. You can use these actions to execute SQL queries or scripts, export or import data from or to databases, create or drop tables, etc.
• File System actions - These actions allow you to work with files and folders on your local or network drives. You can use these actions to copy, move, delete, rename, create, zip, unzip files or folders, or get or set file or folder attributes, etc.
• Web actions - These actions allow you to access and interact with web pages and elements. You can use these actions to navigate to URLs, click or set web elements such as buttons, links, textboxes, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown lists, images, frames, alerts.

Power Automate Desktop Tips and Tricks

Finally here are some other useful tips and tricks to be aware of:

• Power Automate Cloud flows -  To schedule or trigger your Power Automate Desktop flow based on other activity, e.g. a file being saved into a location, you may want to use Power Automate Flow.
• Screen Record - captures the steps you carry out on scree and helps turn them into the steps for a Power Automate desktop. This can be useful in almost all of the scenarios described in this post and in many more.
• Error Handling - To make your Power Automate Desktop flow more robust and reliable, you should add error handling actions to catch and handle any exceptions that may occur during the execution. You can use the Try-Catch-Finally block to define what actions to perform in case of success, failure, or always.
• Variables - To store and manipulate data in your Power Automate Desktop flow, you can use variables of different types, such as text, number, boolean, list, or table. You can also use the Set Variable and Get Variable actions to assign and retrieve values from variables.
• Loops - To repeat a set of actions for a certain number of times or until a condition is met, you can use loops in your Power Automate Desktop flow. You can use the For Each, While, or Do While loops to iterate over a list, a table, or a custom expression.