Extracting text from body of email

[TomV28]

Hello, a supplier sends me an email with a certain rate that i need to grab. I need to extract a specific number in an email that contains a number with two decimals. This number is not fixed, e.g.

10,92% -> 10,92 should be extracted, only the number is each time different. Only a comma (,) is always available. 

Then it needs to write this number to a text file which i will later use in an excel file (not needed in power automate and send an email with this number to my mail account.

I suspect this needs to be done in a condition, like 

contains(outputs('Html_to_text')?['body'],'XX,XX%') but i do not know how to state it in working code. Any suggestions?

[rzaneti]

Hi @TomV28 ,

You will need some text expressions to achieve it. I will be glad to help you, but first I have some questions about the email template from where you will extract the number:

• Does it follow a default template, or the number can be anywhere in the email body?
• Is it possible to have another "%" character in the email body?
• Will you have the decimal points even if the % is an entire number? (e.g.: for 12%, would it be represented as 12,00% in the email?)

If this is a default email template, please provide us with a sample image/text of that (make sure to remove any sensitive content before sharing it).

Also, I'm sharing an article that I recently wrote about how to extract texts in Power Automate, which can be useful for a better understanding on the available text functions: http://digitalmill.net/2023/08/12/how-to-extract-and-clean-texts-with-power-automate/ 

[TomV28]

Hi, thanks for your quick reply. 

Yes, the number can be anywhere in the body. It is just a plain email concerning a simple text like 'Hi, the current rate is 17,47%' So it is always a number e.g. 11,00% (with always percent character).

It is difficult to understand how to create this code while the percentage can be any number but with always know that there are two characters left and right of the comma and with a percentage sign after the number, e.g. XX,XX%

See attachment screenshot email.

[v-yetonggu-msft]

Hi @TomV28 ,

I'm assuming that you only have a percentage string with '%' in your email body.

If so,I did a test for your reference.

In my scenario:

substring(outputs('Html_to_text')?['body'],sub(indexOf(outputs('Html_to_text')?['body'],'%'),5),6)

Best Regards,

Sunshine Gu

[AlexEncodian]

@TomV28 

The easiest most flexible solution is a regex search. It will extract the pattern no matter where in the email and if the email structure changes.

https://support.encodian.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360006764638-Utility-Search-Text-Regex

For example:

(\d+,\d+)

This pattern will match any sequence of digits followed by a comma and then another sequence of digits.

(\d+,\d+)(?=%)

This pattern includes a positive lookahead (?=%) to ensure that the digits are immediately followed by a % sign, without actually including the % in the match.

you can get ChatGPT to write your queries for you

[TomV28]

Hi, thanks for the example,

I tried your approach, removed condition and replaced with your compose script (see image) and have the flow send an email back to me if it succeeds. It does send me an email back whether there is a number in it or not. What am i doing wrong?

[TomV28]

Hi, thanks a bunch, very interesting but i have absolutely no idea how to implement this into my flow. can you provide me an example e.g. if a number like 10% in an email arrives from email address X it writes a text file with this percentage and sends me an email when it is succeeded?