Automatically transcribe new emails received in Outlook to Obsidian via Airtable.

Automatically transcribe new emails received in Outlook to Obsidian via Airtable#

1. Airtable Setup#

Create a new table, temporarily named Outlook
It should have fields Title, Folder, Content
Fill all Folder entries with 1-Inputs/Outlook
Click Automations to start Create automation
Give the automation a random name
Click Add trigger and select Outlook Email and When email is received
For the first time, you need to fill in your Outlook email account from CONFIGURATION and confirm authorization via email
After that, just select the Outlook Email account from Select account
Click Folder to choose a folder for received emails; I still choose the inbox
Click Add advanced logic or action and select Create record
Name it in Description, for example, Transcribe new email
Choose the Outlook table you just created in Table
Click Choose field in Fields
Select Title and Content
In Title, select Subject
- But to sort by received date in Obsidian later, you can first select Received
- Pay attention to avoid pitfalls below!
- The date and time will contain special symbols like English colons
- Titles with these symbols will be used as note names after downloading to Obsidian
- These special symbols do not comply with naming rules in Obsidian
- There will be no error when syncing with Obsidian, but it will also not succeed
- Therefore, you need to handle special symbols that are not allowed in naming rules in Airtable first
- For example, English colons, slashes, etc., can be automatically replaced with hyphens that do not affect readability
In Content, sequentially select Body
Click Generate a preview to generate a preview and Run tests
Now try sending a new email to your Outlook account
If all goes well, a new record will be added to the Outlook table in Airtable

2. Obsidian Setup#

Use the Airtable2Obsidian sync script
Add a sync folder, such as Outlook
Create a new empty note in this folder
Open this note and press the alt+a shortcut key
It will first check the number of new records in Airtable
Then it will prompt to batch download the content from the Airtable Outlook table to the Outlook folder in the Obsidian library
My folder is 1-Inputs/Outlook
Thus, you no longer need to log in to Outlook to check emails

3. Unresolved Issues#

Occasionally, there are emails with attachments
It would be even better if attachments could be downloaded to Obsidian as well