Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

I have a SP list where users can (but don't have to) attach an email. If a user does attach an email, I want to be able to open that email and reply/forward it on.

I'm not concerned about the logic for checking that the attachment is an email etc - I am happy with the validation required. What I can't work out is how to open the attached email and reply to it (if it is even possible). It seems like the "Reply to email" action is looking for an email in an O365 mailbox (which I cannot use due to corporate setup - I also rely on other info from the list item to respond to the attached email, so it seems the most logical method regardless).

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@wrighty

I would say you may want to consider looking into a Desktop Flow

It might not be possible to achieve your requirements in a Cloud Flow.

Regarding the Cloud Flow:

If it is really not permitted for you to somehow get the internal ID from the attachment and especially not to use the ID in the Power Automate action, I am not sure it is possible another way to actually, truly reply to the e-mail. It may be possible to emulate a reply, or put the contents on the bottom, or something like that but to actually make it as if it were replied to, I am not sure it's possible from Power Automate another way than to put the ID in there so that it is known that the original record of the email was replied.

If the presence or absence of a correspondence to the ".eml" file to the real original e-mail, does not matter, then you do not need to necessarily open and reply to it - you may be able to just place it inline. I am not sure there is a way to exactly emulate opening the ".eml" file in Outlook and replying to it from a Cloud Flow though.

If the corporate policies do not allow the access to the mailbox from Power Automate, not only might it not be possible to reply to an e-mail, but it may not be permitted to send e-mail out of Power Automate at all using the out of the box Actions in the first place. In that case, you should follow the policies of the company. If they have a specific reason to not allow Power Automate to access a mailbox directly, but they allow the usage of, say, the Outlook Desktop client, then you may need to check with your company about the specific guidelines about how you can do this in a way that complies with the policies.

In the case the issue is that you would like to emulate opening the ".eml" file in Outlook and replying to it , and you want to avoid something like a complex add-in, you may want to consider this. While I think this might not be possible from a Cloud Flow, you may want to consider looking into a Desktop Flow instead ( Robotic Process Automation - which basically also uses no-code/low-code but does not run on the cloud but on a Desktop) and create an automated process on a desktop running which will go ahead and open the attached ".eml" file in an Outlook Desktop Client, and "Reply" to it directly from there (much like a person would, except it would be automatically done). Doing it this way, you may be able to make it so that it would behave exactly as if someone opened the attached ".eml" file and reply to it from Outlook Desktop Client and replied to it there - in that case, you can get that specific functionality you want.

Check if it helps.