Can you use PowerAutomate to move mails tagged with a category to a target folder?

Question

RIght now I have a mailbox rule that moves mails to a certain folder when a certain categorie is set. But the rule does not work automatically. I need to use an Outlook menu or ribbon button to execute the rule.

Is it possible to set a PowerAutomate workflow that automatically moves a mail to a folder, when the categorie is set.

If the flow can't be triggered on categorie settingg, is there a way to schedule the rule?

Kind regards,

Peter

Answer 1

Hi @Peter Geelen ,

Based on the information I found, it seems that triggering a Power Automate flow when an email is categorized in Outlook is currently not possible. Users have discussed this limitation in the Power Platform Community forums. Some users have suggested alternatives like creating shared mailboxes for every category and forwarding emails to them, then writing flows for all those categories.

As for moving emails based on certain words in the subject, it seems possible to set up a flow in Power Automate. However, this might not fully meet your needs if you specifically want to trigger the flow based on categories.

Regarding scheduling rules in Outlook, it seems that Outlook doesn’t natively support scheduling specific rules to run at a specific time. However, there are some workarounds involving the use of task items with specific reminders and Outlook VBA. Please kindly understand that the Outlook tag here we mainly focus on general issues about Outlook desktop client, if you want to know more about VBA, it is recommended that you post a new thread with "office-development" to get more professional help.

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Answer 2

If I'm good informed this cannot be done. Instead you should set a search folder in outlook to show every categorized email (from all or specified categories) in this folder. (see link below) Those emails will be not moved to the created folder only shown there as search result when folder ist opened.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-search-folders-to-find-messages-or-other-outlook-items-c1807038-01e4-475e-8869-0ccab0a56dc5#OutlookVersion=Classic_Outlook