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In this post, we’ll discuss how we can automate certain operations around SharePoint List attachments using Microsoft Power Automate. We’ll be discussing the following items: –

• Copy attachments to a document library
• Send list attachments as Email attachment
• Delete attachment

Solution

Copy attachments to a document library

Here, the idea is to copy the attachments to a separate document library.

This might be important if, there’s a case scenario of attaching multiple files as attachments. A document library is much more versatile in dealing with files than just plain attachments.

Here’s what we’re going to do. For each list item, we’ll create a new folder in a document library and add all the attachments there.

• Set the trigger for, When an item is created.
• Create new Folder. Folder name is a combination of item title and item id so as to generate a unique name. Folder path is set to, concat(triggerBody()?[‘Title’], ‘_’, triggerBody()?[‘ID’])

• Get all the attachments

• For each attachment, download the file content. Input for “Apply to each” is the “Body” from the previous step. ID is the item ID in question. File Identifier is the current attachment’s id.

• Create a new file in our destination library.

The input can be defined as below,

Property	Action From	Formula
Folder Path	Create New Folder	body(‘Create_new_folder’)?[‘{FullPath}’]
File Name	Current Attachment Name	items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘DisplayName’]
File Content	Current Attachment File content	body(‘Get_attachment_content’)

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Send list attachments as Email attachment

• I’m keeping the trigger same as, when a new item is created. But, set it as per your requirement.
• Initialize an empty array variable. This will be used to temporary store all the attachments files.

• Next, get all the attachments for the current item

• For each attachment, download the file content. Input for “Apply to each” is the “Body” from the previous step.

• Store the file content in our array variable in the following format. Name is the DisplayName from the previous step. ContentBytes is also from the previous step

• Finally, send the email with the following parameters.

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Delete attachment

There’s an OOTB Flow action card to delete an attachment easily.

Key Takeaways

• Attachment is a key component of a SharePoint list.
• In this post I’ve demonstrated, some of the key operations that can be done around SharePoint attachments.
• Using SharePoint files as attachment, we need to ensure the JSON format is in correct format.

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