Parsing the file extension for a Gmail to Dropbox automation

[emeraldlake]

In Gmail, I have a filter set up that automatically forwards emails with a specific subject line to Pabbly's email parser.

In Pabbly Connect, I use the email parser as a trigger to then save the email's attachments to a specific Dropbox folder. And since each email has two attachments, I repeat the step (shown below) to first find the Attachment Links 0 and then Attachment Links 1.

Since the attachments all use the same name (sales report.xls and sales report.pdf) each month, I opted to use the subject line of the email as the filename since that's specific each month.

But somehow, I need Pabbly to recognize the file extension of the attachment and retain that. So, while it needs to note if the file is an Excel file or PDF, I want it to apply the subject as the filename.

Is that possible to do?

Here's my original attempt. This version stores the file in the DropBox, but because of the colon in the filename, it only appears in the online version of DropBox. My Windows application can't show it because of the special character. So I have to rename it in the browser version for it to appear on my computer.

To get the file extension to be retained, I tried appending an underscore and the Attachment Links 0 to the filename.

But that gives me a malformed path error when I test it.

I have not made any changes to the path, which worked fine when I first started working on this last week.

I'd appreciate any help I can get in trying to set this up successfully. Please note that I'm coming from Zapier to Pabbly and finding the learning curve to be very challenging. So, if you could be very specific in your suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

All the best,
Tara

 

[Pabblymember11]

Hey @emeraldlake

The attachment URL that you are supplying to DropBox's API in the file name field looks to contain some special characters, which is why the file is not being accepted for upload by DropBox's API.

Please enter the limited characters and refrain from entering the URL in the file name area.

 

[emeraldlake]

So, if I don't enter the attachment URL in the filename, how do I get the file to be saved with the file extension?

 

[Pabblymember11]

Hey @emeraldlake

You may refer to the following screenshot on how you can extract the extension and pass it in a dynamic manner.

 

[emeraldlake]

Great! Thank you. I have that working now.

A couple more questions, when my Gmail filter forwards the email to Pabbly's email parser, do you know if it will include "Fwd:" in the subject line? If it will, I need to know how to strip that out of the filename since Windows can't handle the semicolon in a filename.

Also, sometimes, this email will have two attachments, and other times, it will have three. Is there a way to tell Pabbly to repeat (and increment) the process until all the attachments are processed? Right now, I've just duplicated the Split Text and Upload File steps for the second attachment. But if I do that a third time and there is no third attachment, what will happen when Pabbly tries to execute this workflow?

 

[Pabblymember11]

A couple more questions, when my Gmail filter forwards the email to Pabbly's email parser, do you know if it will include "Fwd:" in the subject line? If it will, I need to know how to strip that out of the filename since Windows can't handle the semicolon in a filename.

You can refer to the following screenshot to parse the Fwd: from your email subject.

Also, sometimes, this email will have two attachments, and other times, it will have three. Is there a way to tell Pabbly to repeat (and increment) the process until all the attachments are processed? Right now, I've just duplicated the Split Text and Upload File steps for the second attachment. But if I do that a third time and there is no third attachment, what will happen when Pabbly tries to execute this workflow?

Regarding that, you can use the first capture of the webhook response again but in the advanced response by toggling the "Simple Response" button and then you can process that attachment field data in the Iterator action step which will process your attachment in your DropBox one by one.