Remove duplicate emails from inbox?

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Posted on by MarcusD1

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I have a problem I though Power Automate would be perfect for, but I can find any existing Flow solutions for it.

I receive many dozens of duplicate emails a day in my Outlook inbox as a result of being included on more than one distro list, and/or part of a "redirect" rule. This obviously clogs up my inbox and causes all kinds of headaches. Since I can't really control which distro lists or redirect rules I'm placed on, I was hoping there was a way to have a rule that when an email arrives, it checks my inbox and if that email already exists, it deletes the new one (or sends it to a subfolder, etc.).

Is this even theoretically possible with PA?

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ScottShearer 25,290 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@MarcusD1

Please see my example below and let me know if this is what you need. Please note the single quotes in my search filter.

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Barret 652 Most Valuable Professional on at

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You could definitely come up with something that could accomplish this. The tricky part would be creating the logic that determines what defines an email as a duplicate. You can do something like:

When a new email arrives, compare against the last 50 emails or something and if the subject and first 50 characters of the body match any of those emails, delete it or move it to subfolder.

You won't be able to compare the from or to addresses if some of them are to distros or forwarded from another account. And you'll have to strip things like FWD or something like that from subject lines for forwarded emails and so forth. But it definitely could be done.

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MarcusD1 271 on at

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I implemented this and let it run over the weekend. It's failing in the Conditional. Doesn't like the logic expression.

This is the expression I have in the Condition:
length(outputs('Get_emails_(V3)')?['body'])

Did I typo something?

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ScottShearer 25,290 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@MarcusD1

Your expression should reference body/value rather than body. You should have selected Value rather than Body from Dynamic properties.

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MarcusD1 271 on at

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I fixed the expression, but now it's applying it to every email. My "If yes" action was set to move the duplicate into a sub-folder (or at least that was my intention), but since making the edit to the expression, every email is being moved into the sub-folder. Unfortunately, given the week, I haven't received any duplicates yet since making the correction - so I'm not sure yet how those are behaving.

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ScottShearer 25,290 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@MarcusD1

First, turn off your Flow so that it doesn't do any damage or cause you work.

Then, please post a screen shot of the Flow.

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MarcusD1 271 on at

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Yeah... I've certainly done that before (caused damage and/or created a lot of clean up for myself). 😁 But minimal impact so far this time.

Here's my screen shots:

The full text of the expression is:
length(outputs('Get_emails_(V3)')?['body/value'])

... and thank you for your continued help with this Scott. I just signed up for a "How to Use Flow Expressions" course on Udemy, but I'm not there yet.

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jowe1989 2 on at

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Hi Scott
I tried it too and it is like Marcus said. It always delete all mails and not just the duplicated ones. I didnt found any solution to handle it.
Best regards

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dororeich 3 on at

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Have you solved your issue already? I am looking for a similar flow that deletes my duplicate emails

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ScottShearer 25,290 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I suggest using the built-in Outlook Clean Up function. On the Home ribbon, click on Clean-up and select Folder or Folder and Subfolders.

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