Three sorting problems and one bad action :"Retrieve email messages from Outlook"

[ViliBit]

I have a flow where from each unread email I want to extract a number and a date, that I will use later as variables.

I don't know if it's just my problem, but the "Retrieve email messages from Outlook" action, brings incoming emails in a random order.

I tried to extract the number and the date into a "data table", but ... surprise, you can't sort data in a data table. I can sort a list but I have two values, a ​​number and a date which represent two separate variables.

In conclusion the problem can be solved by having an answer to one of this three problems:

- How can I sort the emails brought by the "Retrieve email messages from Outlook" action, or

- How can i sort values in a data table, or

- Can i sort a list with number and date values and use later as two separate variables?

[VJR · Accepted solution]

Hi @ViliBit 

Currently there is no action for sorting a Datatable or the "Retrieve email messages" and that will only need submitting a feature request if it is not present in the list or upvote it if present.

For sorting a datatable all I can think of now is to write this table to an Excel and then use Excel as a datatabase, write an SQL query with the sort function. I know thats not straightforward but can't help.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Desktop/PAD-Sorting-Datatable/m-p/1312902/highlig...

[ViliBit]

Thanks @VJR for your response. I didn't even think that such an action does not read the emails in order. The same with datatable. You gather some data and you can't do anything with it. Sorting should be pretty trivial.

I wanted to avoid creating an excel file. It seems I have no choice, for now.

[ViliBit]

About "Retrieve email messages from Outlook" action, I made a request at 

https://ideas.powerautomate.com/d365community/idea/b72c1fa1-b038-ed11-a81b-000d3ae2981f 

Please upvote that.

Thanks!