Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hello Power Platform Community,

I'm facing an issue while using Power Automate to upload email attachments from Outlook into an Azure DevOps work item.

Scenario:-

My flow currently does the following:

Triggers when a new email arrives.
Retrieves attachments using Get Attachment (V2).
Uploads the attachment to Azure DevOps Work Item using the Send an HTTP request to Azure DevOps (POST: "https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/wit/attachments?fileName=file.zip&api-version=…)
Updates the work item with the uploaded attachment URL using Send an HTTP request to Azure DevOps (PATCH: https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/wit/workitems/{id}?api-version=7.1)

Issue:

The attachment upload is succeeding, and the file is getting attached to the Azure DevOps work item. However, the attached files appear to be corrupted / blank when opened from Azure DevOps.

For example:

PDF files open with the correct number of pages but the pages are blank.
in some cases, files appear empty or unusable.
Also it seems that any .msg attachments are totally skipped by Power Automate. It is not considering the .msg files as attachments.

What I have already tried

I tested multiple approaches in Power Automate, including:

Using Get Attachment (V2) output directly
Using Compose with:
- base64ToBinary(...)
Setting the Azure DevOps upload request header to:
- Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Ensuring the attachment is later added to the work item using the returned attachment URL

Do you know or have already a working solution where the email attachments could be successfully attached to ADO Work Items?

Any sort of guidance would be much appreciated

Regards,

Soumik

Categories:

Using connectors

Hi @SB-23031512-0,

Even though you tried Get Attachment (V2), base64ToBinary(), and Content-Type: application/octet-stream, the issue is that Azure DevOps requires pure binary in the POST upload body, not JSON and not encoded content. The Outlook “Get Attachment (V2)” action does not return true raw binary and often corrupts files (PDF, ZIP, images, etc.).

To fix this:

Use Get Email (V3) → Include Attachments = Yes
For each attachment, pass the ContentBytes directly as the raw HTTP body:
@{base64ToBinary(items('Apply_to_each')?['ContentBytes'])}

(No JSON, no quotes, no wrapping.)
Set on the POST upload step:
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Content-Length: <length of binary>

Use the returned URL to PATCH the work item.

This combination produces valid, non‑corrupted attachments.
Note: .msg files are never returned as attachments, so they cannot be uploaded using this method.

Only .eml files are reliably exposed, .msg files need to be converted or forwarded differently (Outlook API or Graph)
.eml vs .msg

Format	Used by	Notes
.eml	Most email systems (Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, Apple Mail)	Open standard MIME format
.msg	Microsoft Outlook only	Proprietary Microsoft format

Why .eml works in Power Automate (but .msg doesn't)?
Power Automaet’s Outlook connectors parse emails using MIME standards.
Since .eml follows MIME, it appears as an attachment with proper ContentBytes.
But .msg is Microsoft‑proprietary, so Flow usually skips it.

That means, you have to make suer that the instead of attaching .msg file you need to attach it as .eml file or convert the .msg file to .eml file. There are various methods to do this.

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