Get Outlook Mail Messages - Specified Folder does not exist - works 95% of the time - why not 100%?

[taxguy33]

I have been scouring the UiPath Forum for all the existing threads about the “specified folder does not exist” error when it comes to “Get Outlook Mail Messages” errors.

I have implemented all the suggested solutions and confirm that the folder and mail accounts are all case-sensitive and match perfectly. In Production - this activity works 95% of the time, but on 5% it comes up with this “specified folder does not exist” error when I’m searching for a mail message.

Why would this only happen a small % of the time (it’s the same exact activity that works - not a different mail account or mail folder)? Has anyone experienced this intermittent error situation?

My latest attempt to fix the issue was to put the “Get Outlook Mail Message” activity within a Retry Scope loop 3 times with a boolean variable condition that determines if any “mail messages” were found in the Output of the “Get Outlook Mail Message” activity (retry if no messages were found / this error message was encountered). This did not seem to fix the issue.

[lakshman (Ganta lakshman)]

@taxguy33

Please make sure Outlook application should be open while Bot is running else Bot can’t read emails and will get such kind of errors.

If you are getting this error then use Start process activity and open outlook and then try to read emails.

[email2vjanand (Vijay Anand)]

Hi @taxguy33,
I have experienced this error many times in my ongoing process in production. My process involves accessing email from subfolders under a shared mailbox. I’ve observed this error even if the outlook is open. Here are the options you could try (both worked for me).

1. Give an hour after you open the Outlook application before you run the process. Even though the subfolders under the shared mailbox are visible, for some reason, the bot couldn’t identify them. This wait time really worked for me and I’m still using this option.

2. You can simply close the outlook application and try running the process without it. It worked for me many times.

Let me know how it goes. All the best.