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Creating Planner Tasks from Outlook Emails

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Posted on by teendoctor

I have used Trello for a long time but have now moved to Planner. One feature that Trello had that I used a lot was sending a received Outlook email to my Trello board as a task. I understand that this is not possible with Planner, so I have been trying to find a work-around that works easily, but I have not been successful.

The first thing I tried was to turn the email into an Outlook task and used the Power Automate Flow to copy that task to Planner. The problems I had with this was that I ended up with tasks both in Outlook and Planner and that the attachment to the email wasn't copied to the task in Outlook and thus it wasn't copied to Planner either.

I then tried the Flow to copy flagged Outlook emails to Planner. While that did work (though it creates tons of duplicates, for some reason) the problem I have is that I normally flag emails all the time but not all of them need to become tasks. I tried to see if there was a way to create a certain type of flag that would indicate which emails should be copied to Planner. But I couldn't figure this out. So now I have too many flagged emails going to Planner.

I am unsure what else I can try here. It seems like there should be a simple way to do this, but alas I cannot find it. I would appreciate any assistance.

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trice602 15,402 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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HI @teendoctor ,

If you understand you correctly, you want to create a Planner task when a new email arrives in Outlook. Here's one example. In this example, I am getting a future time to assign a due date, creating a task, getting some html out of the email as the body of the planner task details, and then updating the task with category colors, priorities, assignments, etc.

Note: it doesn't specifically have to be a shared inbox, you can also select the trigger, 'When a new email arrives...". You can also limit the task creation based on subject content, body content, sender, and more.

If this works for you, please mark as a solution to help others find it quickly! Always glad to help! Tom 👍🏽

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teendoctor 2 on at

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Hi Tom

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately that’s not exactly what I want to do. In Trello I was able to forward certain emails that I designated to Trello to create a task. I understand that isn’t possible in Planner. But no, I wouldn’t want every email I receive to go to planner as a task. I also cannot designate emails by subject or content. I read the email and then wish to do something that would add the email (and its attachment) as a task in planner.

I’m currently using a flow that finds flagged emails but it is creating a lot of duplicates and every email I flag doesn’t need a task created for it. So this is not working well.

I thought that maybe I could give the email a certain type of flag to designate it should go to planner but I cannot find a way to do that either.

Please let me know if you have any other thoughts.

Thanks.

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trice602 15,402 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi,

One solution that has worked for me in this situation then is to create a new folder. Then as you review emails and determine you want them to go to the planner board as a task, simply drag them to your new folder. I just retested this, and it created my new task. If this works for you, please mark as a solution to help others find it quickly! Always glad to help! Tom

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trice602 15,402 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Here's another version that may be useful. In this example I am triggering manually but this can run a business hours M-F once an hour if needed. Here it is looking for any new emails in a folder as unread (so when you drag them in there after reading, make as unread). The flow will get new emails in a folder and create tasks, make the due day 3 days from now, assign it to someone, then update the task with the first 32,768 characters of the body of the email, and then mark them as read so they don't get processed again.

If this works for you, please mark as a solution to help others find solutions! Always glad to help! Tom

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