Read Mailbox
Reads emails from an IMAP or POP3 mailbox, with optional filters, and returns their details and attachments.
Read Mailbox was previously called Inbound Email.
Read Mailbox reads the emails of a mailbox (IMAP or POP3) and returns their details (sender, recipients, subject, body, date…) and their attachments. You can filter by sender, recipients, subject, body or date, and keep only unread emails or emails with attachments. Use it to process incoming orders, invoices or support requests sent by email.
The action needs an SMTP Inbound credential with your mailbox's server and account. For a Gmail example, see Gmail incoming. If your mailbox requires OAuth sign-in, use Read Mailbox V2.
Add the action
In the Process Designer toolbox, pick Read Mailbox (or type Read Mailbox in the search box).
- In Select POP3/IMAP credentials, pick the mailbox credential. If it does not exist yet, the selector has a shortcut to create it in the Credentials Manager.
- Write your filters in Filter (see Filter rules), and tick Unread or Has attachments if needed.
- Map Result to a process variable of the data model InboundEmailInformation, marked as a list.
Inputs and outputs
| Field | Direction | Type | Required | What to put / what you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Select POP3/IMAP credentials | Input | Credential | Yes | The SMTP Inbound credential of the mailbox. |
| Filter | Input | Text | No | One filter per line. Empty = all emails. |
| Unread | Input | Boolean (true/false) | No | Only unread emails. Has no effect on POP3. Default false. |
| Has attachments | Input | Boolean (true/false) | No | Only emails with attachments. Default false. |
| Result | Output | List of InboundEmailInformation | Yes | The emails read. |
| Invalid Emails | Output | List of InboundEmailInformation | No | The emails that could not be processed. |
| Attachments | Output | List of File | No | The attachments of the emails read. |
Each email in Result has the fields id, subject, to, cc, bcc, sender, body, status, size, sendDate, importanceLevel and fileIndexes. fileIndexes lists the positions, in Attachments, of that email's attachments.
Filter rules
You can filter by:
subject,from,bodyto,cc,bccdeliveredAfter,deliveredBefore,deliveredOn: emails received after, before or on a date
Rules:
- Put each filter on its own line.
- After the filter name, write a colon (
:) or a space:from: name@example.comandfrom name@example.comare the same. - Filter names are not case sensitive:
FROM,fromandFromall work. - Date format for the date filters:
YY/MM/DDorMM/DD/YY. - A part of a value is enough:
from: name234matchesname234@test.com. - With no filter, all emails are read.
Example:
from: name234@test.com
deliveredAfter 2022-09-02
subject My subjectThis reads the emails received after 2 September 2022, from name234@test.com, whose subject contains My subject.
Good to know
- Unread has no effect on POP3: the POP3 protocol does not track read status.
- If the credential is missing or invalid, the step fails with "Invalid credentials."
- Use the
fileIndexesof an email to find its files in Attachments, for example inside a For Each over Result.