Read attachment content (pdf format) for incoming emails

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Posted on by Rayearth

Hi,

When an Outlook.com email arrives I would like to save the pdf attachment into specific OneDrive folder.

The problem is that I have more emails of the same topic, body, from and attachment name. I can only differentiate one from another by reading pdf attachment content.

Can this be automated by PA in 2023?

Did some tests but PA in my case in unable to get attachment content - it's encoded probably.

I found a way to make it work with base64ToString function on txt attachments (not my case/file format though).

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Rayearth 17 on at

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Hi @AlexEncodian, thanks for the suggestion.

Tried to set it up for a single case where my pdf attachment contains just the "pit tax" string, but I get an error saying:
The API 'encodiandocumentmanager' returned an invalid response for workflow operation 'Get_PDF_Text_Layer' of type 'OpenApiConnection'. Error details: 'The API operation 'GetPdfTextLayer' requires the property 'body/TextLayer' to be of type 'String' but is of type 'Null'.'
Any ideas where this is coming from?

Flow setup:

Flow test result:

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Rayearth 17 on at

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My PDF attachments have selectable text inside so I assume the "flatness" is not my case in fact.

I managed to build a flow that works for me, but to be honest I don't really understand why this has to be so over complicated with the additional steps (getting email, creating a temp file in temp folder, getting file's content, moving recognized file to destination and renaming it to target filename).

Appreciate if somebody can explain briefly why PA/Encodian cannot read PDF's content "on the fly" ie. without saving the attachment to OneDrive or SharePoint and directly from the email. The actions' parameter options are there...

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Rayearth 17 on at

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Thanks @AlexEncodian for the investigation and suggestions.

I managed to make my flow a little bit leaner using just one additional step (Get attachment action) and then Encodian's file content upon saving to OneDrive. Same, expected result as before. This suits me better 😊

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Rayearth 17 on at

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I'm confused.

Both this and this flow which originally gave no errors but now stopped working for me and the same error msg appeared for both on the Get PDF Text Layer step.
The API 'encodiandocumentmanager' returned an invalid response for workflow operation 'Get_PDF_Text_Layer' of type 'OpenApiConnection'. Error details: 'The API operation 'GetPdfTextLayer' requires the property 'body/TextLayer' to be of type 'String' but is of type 'Null'.'
Hello again @AlexEncodian. Um... has anything changed on Encodian side?

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AlexEncodian 4,409 Moderator on at

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@Rayearth

Hi Ray, please get in touch with support on our website. They’ll ask you for the inputs and tell you why the error message is occurring. Did the PDF files definitely have text layers?

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