Kansas State University

When you connect Outlook to Power Automate, you’re no longer limited to sorting emails or setting up basic rules. You’re building smart workflows that respond, organize, and collaborate for you. Here are a few ways Power Automate can turn your inbox into a productivity hub:

• Trigger workflows across your favorite tools.
  Move beyond Outlook’s borders by connecting emails to Teams, Excel, SharePoint, OneDrive and more. You can set up flows that automatically create tasks, log data, or send updates, all from a single email.

• Handle multi-step processes with ease.
  Instead of applying one action to one rule, flows can follow a full path. For example,  an email arrives from a key contact, the attachment is saved to OneDrive, a flag is set, and a message is sent to your team in Teams.

• Schedule automations to work for you.
  Want to send yourself a weekly digest of flagged emails every Friday at 3 p.m.? Power Automate can handle that. No more setting calendar reminders or pulling info manually..

• Build seamless approval workflows.
  Power Automate allows you to build structured approval processes that go far beyond manual forwarding. Whether it’s a request form or a policy update, your inbox can trigger a full review cycle.

• Create smarter alerts and notifications.
  Instead of relying on inbox rules or pop-ups, set up custom alerts via Teams, push notifications or mobile text when critical messages arrive.

Automate sending a prewritten email 

While Outlook templates are helpful, they do have their limitations. One example is that you can’t put in a subject line or add attachments. Here’s how you can use Power Automate to solve the Outlook template problem. This version sends a ready-to-go email with a subject line, message body, and file attachment—all automatically.

The following is a flow created from scratch, but there are many templates you can choose from to speed up this process.

Create a new flow

1. Go to Power Automate.
2. In the left navigation, click Create.
3. Click Instant cloud flow.
4. Name your flow.
5. For the trigger, select Manually trigger a flow.
6. Click Create.

Add a step to get the file

1. Click + Insert new action.
   

2. Search for Get file content.
3. Under OneDrive for Business, select Get file content.
   

4. In the File field, click the folder and then click the root folder arrow.
5. Browse and select the file you want to attach.Note: You must click the folder arrow to select it.

Add the Email Action

1. Click + Insert new action.
2. Search for Send an email (V2).
3. Under Office 365 Outlook, click Send an email (V2).
4. Fill out the fields :

• • To: Enter the recipient(s)
  • Subject: Add your custom subject line
  • Body: Write your email message

Note: It is recommended you send this to yourself first so you can verify it works as intended.

Add the Attachment

In the Send an email (V2) step:

1. Scroll down to advanced parameters.
2. Select Attachments
3. Click + Add new item
4. Under Name, type what you want the attached file to be called.
5. Click the Attachment Content box.

• • Click inside the field.
  • Hit the lightning bolt icon.
  • Double-click  Get file content, and then click File Content.
    

Save and Test Your Flow

1. On the top menu bar, click Save.
   Note: It will take a few seconds to save.
2. On the top menu bar, click Test, select Manually.
3. At the bottom of the flow box, click Test, click Continue. and then click Run Flow
4. Click Done.
5. Verify the flow was sent by ensuring it was sent to the recipient.

Run your flows

Once your flows are created, you can run them by:

1. Clicking My Flows on the left sidebar.
2. Click the flow that you want to run and then click run on the top menu bar.

Learn more

• Overview of using Outlook and Power Automate
• Get started with Power Automate