Automatically Save Gmail Attachments to Google Drive Using Microsoft Power Automate

This article is going to show you how to leverage low-code process automation tools to increase your productivity and automate repetitive tasks. Specifically, this article will show you how to automatically save Gmail attachments to a Google Drive folder using Microsoft Power Automate.

Note that you will require a Microsoft account and Office 365 subscription to follow the steps outlined in this article. Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Click here to get your Office 365 Home annual subscription.

What is Microsoft Power Automate?

Microsoft Power Automate is a tool that allows users to automate tasks across the most common apps and web services. Power Automate is one component of Microsoft’s Power Platform (the others being Power BI and Power Apps). Microsoft Power Automate is a cloud based software-as-a-service solution that is available to both Office 365 personal and enterprise customers. Microsoft Power Automate is included in Office 365 personal subscriptions in a limited offering. This offering, sets a cap on the number of flows (i.e. business processes) that can be run per month and also provides access to a limited number of standard connectors (for more information on what connectors are check out this article). Power Automate has a ton a useful pre-built workflow templates that can help you automate common and repetitive tasks very easily. It also allows you to create custom workflows where a template does not exist.

How Do I Automatically Save Gmail Attachments to Google Drive Using Microsoft Power Automate?

Check out the video below for a step-by-step walk through of how to use Microsoft Power Automate to automatically save Gmail Attachments to your Google Drive. For text based instructions continue reading below.

Step-by-Step Instructions on How To Automatically Save Gmail Attachments to Google Drive Using Microsoft Power Automate

Step 1: Open your internet browser and navigate to https://flow.microsoft.com & login using your Microsoft account credentials. Note as outlined above, you will require an Office 365 personal or enterprise account to use Power Automate. You can also sign up for the free offering here using your work or student email account.

Step 2: Enter "Gmail" into the search box on the landing page.

Step 3: Click on "Save Gmail attachments to your Google Drive". This is a template workflow pre-built by Microsoft.

Step 4: Next, you will need to setup connections to both Gmail and Google Drive. This means that you will login to each service and grant Microsoft Power Automate permission to access these services. Starting with Gmail, click on the "+" sign.

Step 5: Clicking on the "+"will open a new window that asks you to sign in to your Gmail account using your google credentials. Enter the email address that you want to use in this workflow and click next.

Step 6: Enter the password for the email address that you want to use in this workflow and click next.

Step 7: Next the Microsoft Power Platform is going to request permission to access your Google Account. This is necessary for the workflow to execute. It is important that you review the Microsoft Terms of Service and learn about the risks associated with granting these permissions. Note that the Microsoft Power Platform is requesting permission to interact with your email however, this workflow will only read email to scan for attachments. After you have read the terms of service, click allow.

Step 8: After you click allow in the previous step, the connection box should update to show a green check mark. This means that the connection to Gmail succeeded. Note that if you see a red exclamation mark, the connection failed and you will need to try again.

Step 9: Next you will need to configure the connection to Google Drive. To do this repeat steps 4 to 7. When repeating step 4, click on the "+" next to Google Drive. Once you have configured the connection, you should see a green check mark next to both services.

Step 10: Next click create flow.

Step 11: Next, you're going to be directed to the flow dashboard. I've provided some additional details on key elements of the dashboard. To continue with setting up the flow, click edit (as outlined in the screenshot call out #1).

1. Edit: This is how you edit the details of your flow. Here you can add extra conditions and parameters.

2. Details: This is where you can view the flow description, owner, status (on/off), created & modified date.

3. Runs: This is where you can view the history of when this flow executed or ran.

4. Connections: This shows you the connections in the flow and current status. Note the green check marks.

5. Flow Status: This is where you can toggle the flow on / off.

Step 12: After clicking edit in the previous step, you'll be directed to the flow designer. This is the visual workflow modeler that allows you add conditions to your flow. To view the workflow trigger parameters, click on "When a new email arrives".

Step 13: Here you can incorporate logic and business rules into the trigger of this flow or subsequent steps in the flow. For example, in this scenario perhaps you want to add a condition to only save attachments to Google Drive where the subject contains the word "Invoice". For this example, we are not going to add any conditions. Proceed to the next step.

Step 14: Next click "Apply to each attachment". Then click "Create file". This will allow you to specify which folder in your Google Drive account the file should be saved in.

Step 15: Click Save.

Step 16: Click the Back arrow to return to the flow dashboard.

Step 17: Now your flow has been setup and will be automatically turned on.

Step 18: The next step is to test executing your flow. Send yourself an email with an attachment to the address used in the flow. In the screenshot below, you can see an email sent to the address used in the flow at 10:06 pm on March 25, 2020.

Step 19: In the screenshot below, you can see that the attachment from the email named "Test Document.txt" was created in the Attachment folder of my Google Drive at 10:17 pm. Note that sometimes there is a delay between when your email is sent and when the flow is executed. Now, for illustration purposes lets look at the run history in Microsoft Power Automate.

Step 20: The screenshot below shows the Flow dashboard and the history of when this flow was executed. You can see that it ran on March 25, 2020 at 10:17 pm which matches when the file was created in the Google Drive.

So that is how you can use low-code process automation tools such as Microsoft Automate to automatically save Gmail attachments to your Google Drive to make your life easier and improve your productivity.

Don't forget click here to purchase your Office 365 home annual subscription.

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