Validate Email Address

[bkeano]

Hi

I have a flow that recieves 'Get Responses' from MS Forms.

The Form asks the user a number of questions, and included is a question if they wish to recieve an email receipt of the data entered to the form, if they do it will ask them for their email address.

I've designed a email in Flow that if they request a email reciept ( condition in flow) then the email is sent.

But before I send the email in flow I want to validate if the email address is formatted correctly, can flow carry out this type of validation or what is the expression for it? ( So check that it contains '@', also has a dot etc)

Or alternatively if the email sending fails can I start another action of that?

If the email does not validate correctly then I will put a condition in so that our office team can contact the customer to let them know

Below a screenshot of my flow

[yashag2255 · Accepted solution]

Hey @bkeano 

Yes. You can follow the steps as: 

Expression: 

contains(last(split(body('Get_response_details')?['r9f2ae5d6c71c4cdc88fcf52ebc7d86ed'],'@')),'.')

In the expression, remove everything from body upto the ]. Place cursor here and from the dynamic content select the email field of the form. 

This expression will check if the last part of the string split at @ contains a '.'. If it does, the value is true and you have the send email to customer in the yes branch and if no send the email to a team member with any relevat details. 

Hope this Helps!

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS!

[manuelstgomes]

Hi @bkeano 

The easiest way to validate this would be to use regular expressions, but Flow doesn't support them yet.

There's already a proposal under review to support this.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Support-for-regex-either-in-conditions-or-as-an-actio...

A quick workaround would be to use a service that validates that for you. I've found a free that you can use. Just create an account at https://mailboxlayer.com (they support up to 250 queries a day for free so check if this is enough for you) and use the API as follows: 

You can get the API key in your account. Please note that there are a lot of services like this. This was the first one I found and works 🙂

Does this help you?

If I have answered your question, please mark your post as Solved.
If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

Cheers
Manuel

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @bkeano,

Has your problem been solved?
If your problem has been solved, You could go ahead and mark the post as solved by clicking “Accept as Solution” so that this thread will be marked for other users to easily identify!

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu

[SNARANJO]

Good aproach to the solution, but first you need to verify that there´s a "@" in the string, failing to do so, may validate strings without the "@" like for example: "a.b.c.com"

So, these would be the two validations to verify for a valid email address on a String:

contains(*The Email Address String Goes Here*,'@')

AND

contains(last(split(*The Email Address String Goes Here*,'@')),'.')

[adylim]

this is great! @SNARANJO ! I'm now trying to work on the case if the user enters abc@domain.com@domain.com (yes this has happened).. not sure how I can achieve the "there should only be 1 '@' and 1 '.'

[SNARANJO]

If request amount is not too bulky you can always ask your self for string validation using an adaptive card from the Flow bot to you with the string you need to double check.

In this case i check the text string for these and other characters: space " " "<" "mailto:" "/" "," ";" etc. You could build an expression to find two or more "@" in the same string as well.

There are some very helpfull videos on coding the adaptive cards on youtube. (These may be tricky)

By using this simple form you avoid sharing an email address to some unknown server over the internet for "validation".

{
"inputs": {
"host": {
"connectionName": "shared_teams",
"operationId": "SubscribeUserFlowContinuation",
"apiId": "/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apis/shared_teams"
},
"parameters": {
"UserFlowContinuationSubscriptionRequest/body/recipient/to": "you@yourdomain.com;",
"UserFlowContinuationSubscriptionRequest/body/messageBody": "{\n \"$schema\": \"http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json\",\n \"type\": \"AdaptiveCard\",\n \"version\": \"1.2\",\n \"body\": [\n {\n \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n \"text\": \"Check Email @{Your input text to verify}\",\n \"weight\": \"Bolder\",\n \"size\": \"Medium\"\n },\n {\n \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n \"text\": \"Please check this email:\",\n \"isSubtle\": true,\n \"wrap\": true\n },\n {\n \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n \"text\": \"Email to check: @{Your input text to verify}\",\n \"wrap\": true\n },\n {\n \"type\": \"Input.Text\",\n \"id\": \"RevisedEmail\",\n \"placeholder\": \"user@domain.com\",\n \"spacing\": \"None\",\n \"style\": \"Email\"\n },\n ],\n \"actions\": [\n {\n \"type\": \"Action.Submit\",\n \"title\": \"Submit\"\n }\n ]\n}",
"UserFlowContinuationSubscriptionRequest/body/updateMessage": "Email verified OK!",
"UserFlowContinuationSubscriptionRequest/body/shouldUpdateCard": true,
"UserFlowContinuationSubscriptionRequest/body/recipient/isAlert": true
},
"authentication": "@parameters('$authentication')"
}
}

[adylim]

great solution!! I will give this a try! thanks! @SNARANJO 

[abonahoom]

This is a great solution, but I'm running into the problem that if the email is blank than I don't want anything to happen and now my flow is showing that it's failing but it's actually working.  Is there a workaround that I can verify that an email address has or has not been entered and if yes than an email is sent and if no than nothing happens?  The error I'm receiving is "'Email' at line '1' and column '3316': 'The template language function 'contains' expects its first argument 'collection' to be a dictionary (object), an array or a string. The provided value is of type 'Null'.'.".  Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

[adylim]

do you have a screenshot of your flow? to handle blank email, I usually put a condition of a string evaluation of the email ahead of the actions I want to perform

[46EMILY]

Hi, still need help on this issue?

[abonahoom]

Yes, I still need help.  So I'm using empty() instead of contains() or length() but I think most any of these would work.  The problem I'm running into is that if there is not an email address than the flow fails and if there is an email address it runs.  The field that the flow is looking at is a person field in SharePoint.  The information is populated from a PowerApp.  What happens in the PowerApp is someone completes it and that person determines who should be notified and not.  I need the flow to look through all of the notificaiton fields to see if someone has been selected or not and to send email to the people who are selected.  I hope that makes sense.  

[abonahoom]

I posted a couple screenshots below.  

[46EMILY]

You could try this: 

• Add an parallel branch after "Send an email (V2) preview (if this is successful it will continue)
• Add an Send email to support team and configure the run after (only if the step below has failed this branch will continue)
• Update Row
• Terminate the flow

[abonahoom]

I'm getting the error before send an email.  The flow seems to be erroring out when it looks at the condition and sees that there is no email address than it's telling me that the email cannot be null.  What I'm confused about is that's why I have the condition, if there is not an email address than I don't want the branch to run, if there is an email address I want the email to be sent.  How do I get rid of this error when technically, the flow is working...I have a parallel branch checking two different fields for email addresses.  One of the fields has an email and the other doesn't.  The flow is sending an email where there is an email address and not sending an email where there isn't an email address.  The problem is that the entire flow is failing because there is not an email address in one branch and it's telling me it can't be a null value.  Does that make sense? 

[46EMILY]

maybe you have to change "0" with the expression "null" 

[46EMILY]

one more thing. Why do you use "get items" and not "get item"? Do you need more than one item in your flow?

[Ventit]

I put the email into a string variable (in my case called getemail) and then test for a multitude of reasons an email can be invalid using

or(endsWith(variables('getemail'),'.'),startsWith(variables('getemail'),'.'),startsWith(variables('getemail'),'_'),startsWith(variables('getemail'),'@'),startsWith(variables('getemail'),'-'),contains(variables('getemail'),' '),startsWith(variables('getemail'),'.'),contains(variables('getemail'),'<'),contains(variables('getemail'),'>'),not(contains(variables('getemail'),'@')),equals(length(variables('getemail')),0),not(Contains(last(split(variables('getemail'),'@')),'.')))

This will return true or false where true = an invalid email

I need all these checks as the email is a free non formatted, non compulsory field.  I encourage an email in that field but what I get is enormously not.  While i do not get a fail now in my process it is still possible for the email to be invalid and the email gets rejected at the smtp level

It would be great if they could create a validate function built in.

[RinatF]

if you use last to refer to the part after @.. but then you have no @ at all and a dot in the address field, this will not work 

[r0663664]

Could you share the condition if I apply to a SharePoint list column