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How can I automate responses for specific emails in Outlook?

  • 3 September 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 850 views

I’d like to know if it’s possible to automate email responses for incoming emails meeting certain criteria in Outlook?

Specifically, I want to create an email template that sends to any emails I receive that contain certain keywords in the subject line AND (importantly) are from senders I’ve never received an email from before.

I don’t know if any of this is possible so would be grateful to hear from anyone in the Community that might know if I can achieve this!

Thanks,

Liam

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3 replies

jessyvg
Userlevel 1
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Hi @LiamA! For what you want to do here, it looks possible with Microsoft Outlooks list of triggers and actions. You’d have to create a Zap along these lines:

  1. Trigger - Microsoft Outlook - New Email
  2. Action - Microsoft Outlook - Find a Contact
    1. This is to search if they are on your existing list of contacts. You’ll want to select Yes on the field Should this step be considered a "success" when nothing is found? field, as you’ll want the Zap to continue if no contact is found.
  3. Action - Filter 
    1. This is where you can set the conditions to continue if the contact isn’t in your list of contacts (Step 2) + input keywords for subjects of emails.
  4. Action - Microsoft Outlook - Send Email

Give that a try and see if that works!

L
Userlevel 1

Hi Jess,

This sounds great, thanks!

My only concern would be: do I need to add all the people in my inbox to my contacts list first for this to work?

I never add people to my contacts list so this would take a long time to go through and sort out. Is there another way where a Zap would just know whether that person had been in touch before based off my inbox?

If I were to go just based off the email address it’s sent to + keywords contained in the subject line. Is this a lot easier? Might still be able to get it to work with this.

Thanks,

Liam

jesse
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey @LiamA, just stepping in for Jess here! Yes, you would need to ensure that folks who’ve emailed you previously have been added to your contact list for this to work. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to determine this just based off of receiving the email as that kind of data about whether your inbox has seen that sender or not before, is not available in what is returned to us through the Outlook API. 

If you think you can get the result you’re after just based off of keywords and email addresses, I would definitely encourage you to try it out! Please keep us posted - we’d love to continue helping out where we can. 🙂

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