Build your first Power Automate flow in 9 steps

You build a flow that saves every attachment from your incoming emails to a folder on OneDrive. You use one trigger and one action. This is the pattern behind almost every flow.

What do you need? An Outlook mailbox and OneDrive through your work or school account.

Good to know: the screenshots on this site show the Dutch version of Power Automate. The English names of menus and buttons are used in the text, so you can follow along in your own language.

How to choose dynamic content

In many fields you do not type fixed text but use data from an earlier step, such as the name of an attachment. This is called dynamic content. Here is how you pick it:

Step by step

Go to make.powerautomate.com and click Create in the left menu.
Choose Automated cloud flow.
Choose Automated cloud flow. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
Give the flow a name, for example Save attachments. In the list of triggers, search for When a new email arrives (V3) from Office 365 Outlook, select it and click Create. Do not pick the Outlook.com version unless you use a private email address.
Name the flow and choose the Office 365 Outlook trigger. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
Click the trigger to open it. On the Parameters tab, set Include Attachments and Only with Attachments to Yes. Cannot see them? Add them under Advanced parameters.
Set Include Attachments and Only with Attachments to Yes. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
Click the plus under the trigger and choose Add an action. Search for OneDrive for Business and choose the action Create file. Be careful: SharePoint has an action with the same name, do not pick that one.
Choose Create file from OneDrive for Business, not the SharePoint one. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
Power Automate automatically puts the action in a loop, Apply to each (in newer versions it is called For each). That is correct: an email can have several attachments, and the action runs once for every attachment.
The action is placed in a loop automatically. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
Under Folder Path, choose a folder on your OneDrive. Click in File Name and choose Attachments Name from Dynamic content. Under File Content, choose Attachments Content.
This is what the completed action looks like. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
Click Save at the top right, then Test. Choose Manually and send yourself an email with an attachment.
After a successful test, every step has a green check mark. Tap the image to enlarge. It shows the Dutch interface.
After a minute, look in your OneDrive folder. Is the attachment there? Then you have built your first flow.