Corrupted Excel File When Being Saved From Outlook

[Andrew17]

Hi,

I am trying to create a simple process to save all emails that come with attachments onto a specific folder on OneDrive. Every time this process works, it seems to create the file, but it is corrupt, and the file size becomes 1-3 KB. The original excel files that are being emailed are .xlsx. Am I doing anything wrong here?

[Andrew17]

[yashag2255]

Hey @Andrew17 

Can you share details on what you are passing in the file content for the create file action? can you check if it is a base 64 string or something else? based on that you might have to change the config a little to make this work. 

Hope this Helps!

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[Andrew17]

Hi @yashag2255,

The content in the files is just text. There are no special characters in it as well. Just to test it out, I set up to receive a .xlsx file with only the word "text" in a cell, and the same thing happened. Is this what you were asking?

[v-bacao-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Andrew17 ,

Please consider using the following configuration to first check if the type of the original file in the attachment is as expected.

It is also recommended that you check whether the attachment you added can be opened normally before testing.

Please take a try.

Best Regards,

[ShawnKeeneTF]

I'm having this exact same problem, but I noticed now that it seems to only be a problem when I'm testing a flow "using data from previous run".  When I do a fresh test from Outlook, it stored working files for me.

When the problem does occur, I observe that the files can be opened in the original email. And they will still work if I use File Explorer to drag them to a folder.  But if they are saved by Flow, the files are not able to be opened with an error "Excel cannot open the file name.xlsx because the file format or file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file."

The file does match the format, it's a XLSX file. But something about flow is corrupting it from being saved. I'm using the default "save o365 attachments to OneDrive Business" flow and the create-file step is set to use 

[CJSower]

I have the same problem here, and get the error below. The Power Automate process is somehow corrupting the file, versus a manual save/drag and drop that does not corrupt the file. I did not used to have this problem with the flow. However, I have also had an issue where my Power BI reports that are linked to the OneDrive files cannot refresh unless I manually save.  Previously, my flows worked and the files in OneDrive were fine, but I had to click on them in OneDrive (which kicked off the auto-save), and then my Power BI reports refreshed just fine.

"We're sorry, we couldn't open your workbook. It's possibly corrupt or using a file format that's not supported.

You'll need to open this in the desktop app."

[Ruddi84]

DO have the same problem here. Have created a very simple flow to save csv-mail attachment (files are always csv) and the flow runs smoothly except the file itself just contains one cell with a long string like: "IlRyYWluaW5nIE5yIiwiVHJhaW5pbmcgTmFhbSIsIlRyYWluaW5nIFRyYWplY3QiLCJUcmFpbmluZyBUaGVtYSIsIlRyYWluaW5nIERvZWxncm9lcCIsIlR (and so on and so on...)"

The files in the mails are perfectly fine csv-files with no issues whatsoever. 

The flow itself also runs perfectly but to me it seems the 'create file' option (sharepoint version) is not ok. 

[beebul]

I think this IS a bug - I'm getting the same results, a perfectly good xlsx file or csv file getting corrupted by flow extracting the attachment and saving to SharePoint doc library.

It won't even open if it's saved as an XLSX but I found if you save as an XLS you get the option below and can at least choose 'Yes'.... but it's still not an acceptable solution.

[antonarekhau]

Having the same issue when using SharePoint Update file action. The flow is updating the xlsx file with the content of the email attachment -> xlsx email attachment. After the update file is not usable anymore.

When sending the attachment file size 2MB, after update file has 4Kb size.

I've tried also the solution mentioned above for checking the extension, did not solve the issue.

[antonarekhau]

After googling some more I finally found the solution, unfortunately not from this forum. Hopefully it helps those who has the same issue. Here it is: https://tomriha.com/how-to-avoid-corrupt-email-attachment-in-power-automate/

[beebul]

Got it working with this solution, thanks @antonarekhau !

[Pancho]

Thank you very much @antonarekhau !!!!! I was struggling a lot with this issue and the base64ToBinary() function solves everything.

[bspill]

Baseto64 solution did not work in my case, BUT @ShawnKeeneTF mentioned the error was only in test scenario and that was true for me. I ran the flow outside of test environment and then I could open the file... well kind of... I cannot "open in app" from SharePoint, but it opens in web and my Power BI query can run against it. Definitely BUGGY behavior. I have several flows loading excel spreadsheets from Outlook the SharePoint 365 and I still have no idea why this one gave me all these issues.

[Garabound]

@antonarekhau My man!!!!

[arafmustavi]

The single life saver comment for me :')