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Filter an email that it doesn't contain "RE:" with Get emails (v3)

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Posted on by Alemax

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to analyze sent emails and need to filter out replies. Specifically, I want to retrieve only emails whose subject does not contain "RE:" using Get emails (V3).

I've tried several approaches (works only with KQL), but none of them seem to work:

1. -subject:'RE:' AND sent>=@{addDays(utcNow(), -30, 'yyyy-MM-dd')} AND sent<=@{addDays(utcNow(), -2, 'yyyy-MM-dd')}
2. NOT subject:'RE:' AND sent>=@{addDays(utcNow(), -30, 'yyyy-MM-dd')} AND sent<=@{addDays(utcNow(), -2, 'yyyy-MM-dd')}
3. (NOT subject:'RE:') AND sent>=@{addDays(utcNow(), -30, 'yyyy-MM-dd')} AND sent<=@{addDays(utcNow(), -2, 'yyyy-MM-dd')}
4. subject<>'RE:' AND sent>=@{addDays(utcNow(), -30, 'yyyy-MM-dd')} AND sent<=@{addDays(utcNow(), -2, 'yyyy-MM-dd')}

My goal is to exclude any emails that are replies and only get original messages within a specific date range.

Is there a correct way to achieve this kind of filtering?

Thanks in advance for your help!

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11manish 3,333 on at

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try below :

@not(contains(toLower(item()?['subject']), 're:'))

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Alemax 24 on at

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Remember that the condition for Search Query uses KQL. Also, in this case, there is no value for item()?['subject'].

Thanks for the help!

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Haque 3,653 on at

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Hi @Alema

Here is the KQL:

not(startswith(tolower(subject), "re:"))

If we consider there is a chance subject would be null/empty.
subject != "" and subject != null and not(contains(tolower(subject), "re:"))

Bit of optimized one if you care aboutd null/empty and leading and trail white spaces (not in KQL).
@and( not(empty(item()?['subject'])), not(startsWith(toLower(trim(item()?['subject'])), 're:')) )

contains vs startsWith

Thanks.

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Alemax 24 on at

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Hi @Haque,

With the first option, no results were returned, while the second one returned everything.

Thank you!

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rezarizvii 352 on at

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Hi @Alema, hope you are doing well.

Try using this formula:
NOT subject:Re AND sent>=@{addDays(utcNow(), -30, 'yyyy-MM-dd')} AND sent<=@{addDays(utcNow(), -2, 'yyyy-MM-dd')}

Note: While this works and filters out emails that contain 'Re:', it also filters out emails where the subject contains any word that starts with 'Re' like 'Repeat' or 'Reorder'. I could NOT find a way to make it only consider 'Re:' as I kept getting a bad request error which said ':' is not a valid character. Using NOT subject:(Re: ) allowed the colon, but it ignored it in the result and still removed emails that had a words like 'Repeat' or 'Reorder' in the subject.

Please ✅ Does this answer your question if my post helped you solve your issue. This will help others find it more readily. It also closes the item.

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Haque 3,653 on at

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Hi @Alema,

Good to hear the the second one worked.

The first one failed becuase of RE is capitalized in the email subject, " subject<>'RE:'"

If you are sure that RE will capitalized, you can change the first expression a bit (to get the benefit of startsWith) in the condion like:

not(startswith(tolower(subject), "RE:"))

I am sure some clues I tried to give. If these clues help to resolve the issue brought you by here, please don't forget to check the box Does this answer your question? At the same time, I am pretty sure you have liked the response!

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rezarizvii 352 on at

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Hi @Haque,

Search Query expects a KQL query and NOT native Power Automate Expressions. It will just ignore the Power Automate Expression and either return all emails or return none.

References:

1. Search Query description for Get Emails (V3) action

2. Use $search Query Parameter in Microsoft Graph APIs - Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn

Thank you.

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Alemax 24 on at

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After a long time, I finally got it:
-subject:\"RE: \"

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rezarizvii 352 on at

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@Alemax, glad you found a solution.

For some reason, I could not figure out a way to make the query accept double quotes or a colon. :(

Thanks for the update. I will keep that in mind.

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