Use flow to select Hyperlink, download and create a file in one drive

[Lee]

Hi there.

is there a way to get flow to select a hyperlik from an email (link contains access to a document.docx) then download the document and save it to a one drive folder?

I know we can do it with attatchments from an email which works fine but I need to be able to get the document from a hyperlink from within the email?

thanks for reading

[ashgupta · Accepted solution]

Currently there is no built-in support to parse the context of email to extract hyperlink and download to pass on subsequent actions.

It would require logic to be outside of flow engine. Can be done but wouldn't be very straightforward.

thanks,

[Courtenay]

Hi there,

Courtenay from Parserr here. Just wanted to let you know. This is exactly what Parserr does We were added to Flow last week and very excited about it.

Parserr allows you to turn incoming emails into useful data to use in various other 3rd party systems.You can use to extract anything trapped in email including email body contents and attachments.

In your case, you could setup a rule on Parserr to extract the exact hyperlinks you need for every email. In flow, you could use that data with any of the other connectors.

Let me know if you need any help. Id gladly set this up for you.

[Anonymous]

Can you give us an example please?  I was trying to do this but it was a bit difficult for me.

[farhandsome]

@Courtenay ,

Is this something you are still offering?

Thanks,

Farhan

[Bill51106]

@Courtney still helping people set this up?

[Anonymous]

Hi Courtney,

Can you please give me some example? I am interested in this.

[Bill51106]

I ended setting up a Zapier email account, it parses it, actually downloads the file and lets me email it where I grab it with a Flow since SP isn't supported under Zaps yet.

[Anonymous]

Thanks!

[sayyedkohler]

I think, now it can be achieved using Power Automate Desktop Flows.

[Bill51106]

I need a PA cloud solution 😕 Thank you.

[DexPoint]

This post is rather old, maybe there wasn't a solution back in 2017. however i recently made a flow that receives an email, finds the link to download the report, isolate the link, download it to OneDrive, then copy it to Sharepoint.

The feature i used is "Upload file from URL" its a OneDrive feature.

Give it a go!

[A_Scott]

Can you provide all the steps you built to download the file from the link within an email and save to OneDrive? Is it possible to add the data to an existing file rather than saving as a new file?

[DexPoint]

I would think it is possible to add data to an existing file but there are lots of details that are required. thinking about it for my flow, i'd probably save it to One Drive, then convert it to a table, then id list rows and put specific filter in that does a match. then compare it against an existing table data and add any that dont exist. (this could be one method) the other could you just get the file content add into the file, then run remove duplicates (using excel macro?).  all depends on what your files look like and structure. Power Automate really likes Excel Tables and it makes it easier to get specific data sets.  I have a formula for creating a dynamic table as well that i use as i have a program that takes a file and creates a table based on used rows. so this is also possible.

I'll try and detail it out as best as possible for you. This is what i did and this is specific to sales data from a specific retailer.

Thats the whole flow. here are the details

Split Email function

Split(outputs('EmailBody')?['body'], outputs('Enter'))

Select

From- this runs through each line and assigns a number

range(0,length(outputs('SplitEmail')))

String - 

outputs('SplitEmail')?[item()]

Position - 

Item()

Filter array, then searches each string and finds "Report Name". the email sender actually sends 2 emails. one for inventory and one for sales. i run the same flow but just have a condition to write different files.

Find Position - purely returns the position i added in the select statement of that line.

URL - uses the position of "Find Position +1" so i have the right line. then splits that specific line.

outputs('SplitEmail')[add(outputs('FindPositionURL'),+1)]

Remove Brackets - cleans up the URL so its usable

replace(replace(string(outputs('URL')),'[',''),']','')

Condition - does a search for specific words (As mentioned i use this flow for inventory and sales files. so it decides where and how to copy the files.

Here is the saving and creation part.

Upload file from URL - takes the Brackets remove output (URL Cleaned up) and downloads the file from that link. then saves it to the URL in one drive. (Backend sharepoint).

The next steps are to copy that file from one drive and save to sharepoint. i do this 2 times. one for current week and one for historical. the difference is one overwrites and one creates new file name. 

This is important because on sharepoint, we automatically have our reporting tool read the file in, this essentially refreshes the data / appends data. the historical is purely for tracking purposes and make sure we track each week.

The last step is to take the received emails and move them to processed this is just so i know that emails are working.