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Summary of Birthdays for the Week Flow

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Posted on by rodamalco

I am trying to create a flow that sends a weekly email for birthdays that in the next 7 days. The birthdays are all in a List that I am connecting to in the flow.

Things I'm having trouble with:

1) I want a summary email and not an "apply to each" because I do not want an individual email for each of the birthdays

2) I keep getting an error message for the action that looks for the birthday: InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Birthday' inputs at line '0' and column '0': 'The template language expression 'formatDateTime(item()['Birthday'],'MM-dd')' cannot be evaluated because property 'Birthday' cannot be selected. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions for usage details.'.

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Sundeep_Malik 6,501 on at

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Hey @rodamalco

Can you give the json data of the above. Remove names with abc, def something. I might be able to help you then.

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rodamalco 17 on at

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I built a test list. This is all the data it has:

Here is the input expression I used for birthdays:

formatDateTime(item()['Birthday'],'MM-dd')

and this is input expression I used for "this week"
formatDateTime(utcNow(),'MM-dd')

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Sundeep_Malik 6,501 on at

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@rodamalco

Can you try
item().Birthday

If this works, next we will see how we can send just one mail for all.

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rodamalco 17 on at

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InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Birthday' inputs at line '0' and column '0': 'The template language expression 'formatDateTime(item().Birthday,'MM-dd')' cannot be evaluated because property 'Birthday' cannot be selected. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions for usage details.'.

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RobElliott 10,525 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Not wishing to step on @Sundeep_Malik 's toes, but we do this every Monday morning at my company and so I have the flow already prepared.

In this example we only want the first 2 people, Chris Rea and David Paton, to be listed in the table in the email.

To avoid the apply to each you need to use a Select action:

The table is formatted as follows:

Spoiler (Highlight to read)
<style> table { border: 1px solid #1C6EA4; background-color: #EEEEEE; width: 80%; text-align: left; border-collapse: collapse; } table td, table th { border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; padding: 3px 2px; } table tbody td { font-size: 13px; } table thead { background: #1C6EA4; border-bottom: 2px solid #444444; } table thead th { font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; color: #FFFFFF; border-left: 2px solid #D0E4F5; } table thead th:first-child { border-left: none; } </style> {outputs of the create html table action}
<style> table { border: 1px solid #1C6EA4; background-color: #EEEEEE; width: 80%; text-align: left; border-collapse: collapse; } table td, table th { border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; padding: 3px 2px; } table tbody td { font-size: 13px; } table thead { background: #1C6EA4; border-bottom: 2px solid #444444; } table thead th { font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; color: #FFFFFF; border-left: 2px solid #D0E4F5; } table thead th:first-child { border-left: none; } </style> {outputs of the create html table action}

Rob
Los Gallardos
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Sundeep_Malik 6,501 on at

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@RobElliott
No Problem Man. You already have the flow created that would definitely help him. I was also gonna suggest the select method. I was thinking to create a similar database, atleast your post saved me from doing that. Hehe.

@rodamalcoHis answer is correct, you should follow it.

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rodamalco 17 on at

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This is super helpful. I will try it now. Is there a way to just use the day and month and not have to update the year to show the "next" birthday?

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RobElliott 10,525 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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You should use the year in the compose actions because otherwise you will have a problem with the filter query. But you'll see that the email just uses the day, date and month without the year.

Rob
Los Gallardos

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rodamalco 17 on at

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Got it.

Do you know why it keeps telling me this expressions is not valid:

formatDateTime(addDays(outputs('Today')6)'yyyy-MM-dd')

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RobElliott 10,525 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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You've missed out the commas before the 6 and after the 6), it should be:
formatDateTime(addDays(outputs('Today'),6),'yyyy-MM-dd')

Rob
Los Gallardos

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