The Outlook step works with the Microsoft 365 mailbox your team has connected. It can send email from your real address so the message lands in your own Sent folder and reads as a genuine one-to-one email, stage a draft in your Drafts folder for a person to review and send by hand, or read recent messages from a mailbox folder so a workflow can react to what has arrived. Sends and drafts can carry file attachments from earlier steps. It needs a connected Outlook account, set up once from the integrations settings page.

Send an email from your connected Outlook address. The recipient, subject, body, and attachments can all come from earlier steps, so each message is tailored to the recipient it goes to.

• When an enquiry comes in, reply from your own address with the right information attached, so the conversation stays in your mailbox
• Send an AI-personalised email to each contact in a list, from your real address
• Send a generated PDF (a quote, report, or summary) straight from your own mailbox

Fill in the recipient, subject, and body. Each field takes a fixed value or a reference to an earlier step, such as an address from a form or a body written by an AI step. Put several addresses in the Recipient Email field by separating them with commas, and add Cc or Bcc recipients a row at a time, each row either a fixed address or a reference to an earlier step. The body is sent as HTML so formatting and links come through. To attach files, point the Attachments field at file outputs from earlier steps, and leave it empty to send without attachments. The email goes out from the connected Outlook address and appears in that account's Sent folder. The step returns the message ID, the conversation ID, and a link that opens the sent message in Outlook.

Stage an email in your Outlook Drafts folder for a person to review and send by hand. Nothing is sent automatically, so a human has the final say.

• Draft a standard reply to each new enquiry for a person to review, personalise if they want, and send
• Prepare a personalised follow-up for a salesperson to check and send from their own mailbox
• Stage a sensitive message so a manager can approve the wording before it goes out

Create Draft takes the same fields as Send Email, builds the message, and saves it in the connected mailbox's Drafts folder instead of sending it. The person opens Outlook, reviews the draft, edits it if they want, and sends it themselves. The step returns the draft ID, the conversation ID, and a link that opens the draft in Outlook.

Read recent messages from a folder of your Outlook mailbox so a workflow can act on what has arrived. Returns a list you can loop over.

• Read new enquiries from the inbox and hand each one to an AI step to summarise or classify
• Pull unread messages from a sender and route them based on what they contain
• Read replies to a large marketing campaign and act on each by sentiment: route hot leads to a sales rep, log interest levels to a spreadsheet or dataset, or add opt-outs to your unsubscribe list

Choose which folder to read (the inbox by default) and, if you want, narrow the results: a specific sender, unread only, and a received-date range. These filters combine. Alternatively, type a keyword to search that folder by relevance. A keyword search runs on its own, so the sender, unread, and received-date filters do not apply when you use it. Set the maximum number of messages to read; the full body of each message is included by default, which you can turn off to keep only the short preview. The step outputs a list of messages, each with its subject, sender, recipients, received time, preview, and a link to open it in Outlook. Pair it with a ForEach step to process each message in turn.

How is this different from the Send Email step?

Send Email goes out through Formt's own sending service, which suits transactional and bulk mail. The Outlook step sends as your own Microsoft 365 address, so the message lands in your real Sent folder and reads as a personal one-to-one email. Use Outlook for relationship outreach and Send Email for volume.

Send Email step →

Does Formt read my whole mailbox?

No. List Messages reads only the folder you choose, only as many messages as the limit you set, and only when a workflow runs the step. The message content is used to run that step and is kept under the same retention and deletion rules as the rest of your workflow data.

My company locks down third-party apps. Will this work?

Many Microsoft 365 organisations ask an IT administrator to approve new apps once for the whole company. If your account can't grant access on its own, your administrator approves Formt a single time and then everyone can connect. The connect screen will tell you if administrator approval is needed.

Can I attach files?

Yes. Point the Attachments field at file outputs from earlier steps, such as a generated PDF. Attachments ride inside the message and are limited to roughly 4 MB in total, so link to very large files rather than attaching them.

Can I send from more than one Outlook mailbox in the same organisation?

One Outlook mailbox is connected per organisation, so every Outlook step uses that shared mailbox. It works well as a shared team mailbox.