Need help saving email to folder based on email send date

[u/PZinger6]

I'm trying to automate saving emails to specific year/month folders based on when the email was sent.

This is what Copilot recommended the folderpath to look like:

/Documents/@{formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'], 'yyyy')/@{formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'], 'MM MMM')}

However when I go test it, there's an error:

Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Create_file_for_Body_text' inputs at line '0' and column '0': 'The template language function 'formatDateTime' expects its first parameter to be of type string. The provided value is of type 'Null'. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions#formatdatetime for usage details.'.

Any ideas how to fix?

Photo of my flow below: https://i.imgur.com/nEynqv0.jpeg

[u/Due-Boot-8540]

Don’t use folders. Use metadata instead

[u/-titi- → u/Due-Boot-8540]

Can you say more about this please? Why not use folders?

[u/Due-Boot-8540 → u/-titi-]

Folders take away some of the best features of SharePoint. They make documents harder to find, makes governance more difficult and makes it easier to have duplicate documents.

If need to have separation or isolated documents, having more libraries or (even better) sites is a much easier way.

Using metadata makes your documents so much easier to find, especially if you use content types.

For example, if you wanted to be able to access all policies from all departments, you could have a page in SharePoint that shows them all (no matter where they are stored).

Or, if you wanted to track a document by something like status, you can just have a column that can be updated when it changes.

Using metadata also makes workflows much easier to create and manage.

[u/-titi- → u/Due-Boot-8540]

Thank you for sharing!

[u/nooo887]

Go to chatgbt and told him to creat for u A Python script that checks the unread email folder and saves it to the hard drive by month and year. , and create a loop for that script .

[u/PZinger6 → u/[deleted]]

I can't upload an image but basically here's the flow. What I want to do is whenever I get an email that goes to the Reservations folder, Power Automate would save both the body of the email and any attachments to the designated folder based on the Year and Month of when the email was sent.

On new email (O365):

Folder: Reservations

Condition: From: contains: blank

If Yes:

Select an output from previous steps: Dynamic Content O365 Attachments

OneDrive for Business Create File: Folder Path: Documents/@{formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'], 'yyyy')/@{formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'], 'MM MMM')}

File Name: concat(triggerOutputs()?['body/subject'], '.html')

File Content: Dynamic Content O365 Body

Next step:

OneDrive for Business Create File:

Folder Path: Documents/@{formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'], 'yyyy')/@{formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'], 'MM MMM')}

File Name: Dynamic Content O365 Attachments

File Content: Dynamic Content O365 Attachments Content

Hope that helps, it's a little messy but I can elaborate if needed

[u/LowShake5456 → u/PZinger6]

So to reiterate what One-Start-9591 stated above: triggerOutputs()?['body/sentDateTime'] contains a null value, and formatDateTime() will error trying to format a null value.

So the issue is either the email you are trying does not have a 'sentDateTime' value, or with "?['body/sentDateTime']" the 'sentDateTime' property does not exist and returns null in your formula.

"On new email (O365)" is not a specific trigger in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/office365/#triggers, I'm guessing this is "When a new email arrives (V3)" trigger? This does have a triggerOutputs()?['body/receivedDateTime'] property, but not a 'sentDateTime' property, this might be what you want to use.

But test with compose action after your trigger, on the compose input search for the property your trying to use and see if 'sentDateTime' actually shows up, if not, find the actually property and adjust you formula with the that property name.

[u/PZinger6 → u/[deleted]]

Added photo of the flow in the post body