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Microsoft Flow and regex

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

When a new email arrives in my inbox, I have it set to detect that email however, I want to parse a section of that email subject and remove the rest. The emails come in like Application for Jack joe from John Doe. I would like an expression that changes the subject to "Person: Jack joe" and nothing else. is this possible in flow?

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v-xida-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @Anonymous,

Could you please share a sample of your incoming email?

Do you want to change the Subject of the received email to "Person: Jack joe"?

Further, do you want to use regex within Microsoft Flow?

The regex is not supported in Microsoft Flow currently, if you would like this feature to be added in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

I assume that your incoming email shows as below:

I have made a test on my side and please take a try with the following workaround:

Add a "When a new email arrives" trigger.

Add a "Compose" action, Inputs field set to following formula:

add(indexOf(triggerBody()?['Subject'],'Application for'),16)

Add a "Compose 2" action, Inputs field set to following formula:

sub(indexOf(triggerBody()?['Subject'],'from'),1)

Add a "Compose 3" action, Inputs field set to following formula:

substring(triggerBody()?['Subject'],outputs('Compose'),sub(outputs('Compose_2'),outputs('Compose')))

Add a "Compose 4" action, Inputs field set to following formula:

concat('Person: ',outputs('Compose_3'))

Image reference:

The flow works successfully as below:

More details about using expression in flow actions, please check the following article:

Use expression in flow actions

Best regards,

Kris

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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thank you for the solution!!

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max06net 9 on at

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Hi all!

just for the record: Instead of doing a lot of counting and mathematics in 4 fields, I found it easier to simply cut around the wanted text.

Same compose-action:
trim(first(split(last(split( triggerBody()?['Subject'], 'Application for' )), 'from')))

For readability:
trim( first( split( last( split( triggerBody()?['Body'], 'text before' ) ), 'text after' ) ) )

All in one function block.

Have a great day!

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DeeTronSEAM 396 on at

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FWIW,

not to take anything away from @max06net 's perfect answer, if you have a situation where you truly need a regEx, both Plumsail and Encodian have connectors with regEx actions (e.g. https://support.encodian.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360006764638-Search-Text-Regex ).

And, although I haven't tried it myself, if you can't manage the extremely reasonable costs of either of those 3rd-party connectors, Paul Murana has a dandy little trick using Excel Online Office Scripts connector to do regEx. https://www.tachytelic.net/2021/04/power-automate-regex/

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