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Excel becomes corrupted when using Power Automate to the forward the original email with the excel

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Posted on by CO-17121326-0

The flow is to forward a specific email with an attachment to a distribution list.

The specific email has an attachment in .xlsx format. It opens fine.

However post the flow, the attachment in the forwarded email remains in the .xlsx format.
It is slightly bigger in KB.
However it cannot be opened.
The error message is "Excel cannot open the file 'FileName.xlsx' because the file format or file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file"

Clearly the file has been corrupted.

In the flow, an Array Variable has been initialised and the attachment is appended to the variable using "Append to Array Variable".

Assitance greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

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Mark Nanneman 991 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Why are you storing the attachments in an array variable? Are you using the "Forward an email" outlook action or are you composing and sending a new email?

If you use "Forward an email (V2)" it will automatically include the file attachments of the email it's forwarding.

If you want to figure out what's going wrong with the attachments you're storing in the variable, it is probably due to the way you're appending the attachments to the array. Can you post a screenshot of it?

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CO-17121326-0 25 on at

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Hi Mark,

Thanks for your reply.

I couldn't find the button to reply directly to your response.

Here is the flow:

The email is not forwarded per se as i don't want FWD: in the subject and also the to/from text in the body of the email.

Regarding the Array Variable. Is this not the correct one for attachments? I guess not!

In respect, of the Array Variable, here are the details:

Thanks,

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CO-17121326-0 25 on at

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This has now been solved.

The Array Variable has been removed from the workflow.

Instead, in "Send an email (v2)", the attachment from "when a new email arrives (v3)" is directly referenced.

This seems to work fine and the attachment now opens when the workflow has completed.

The black box in the picture is the underlying code generated using the following selections:

Insert Expression >> Fx >> Dynamic Content >> when a new email arrives (v3) >> Attachments Content

At this stage, I am not sure how this would work for multiple attachments, but for this use case of a single attachment it works fine.

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