Power Automate: How to Process and Forward Emails with Delay (Step‑by‑Step Guide)

In many real‑world automations, we need to process multiple emails sequentially, perform an action on each email (like forwarding or notifying), and control the pacing to avoid throttling or loops.

In this post, I’ll walk through how I built a Power Automate flow that:

• Is manually triggered
• Reads emails from a specific Outlook folder
• Loops through each email
• Sends an email based on the original message
• Adds a 1‑minute delay between each email

I tested this entirely in my personal tenant, making it easy for anyone to try.

🧩 Use Cases

• Forwarding or re‑sending emails in bulk
• Sending notifications based on incoming emails
• Controlled email processing (avoid Outlook throttling)
• Testing loop behavior in Power Automate

📐 Flow Overview

High‑level design:

Manual Trigger
   ↓
Get emails (V3)
   ↓
Apply to each (email)
   ├─ Send an email (V2)
   ├─ Delay (1 minute)
   └─ Move email (V2)
✅ Prerequisites
Power Automate access (Personal / Developer / M365 tenant)
Outlook connection
A test email folder (recommended)
🏗️ Step‑by‑Step Implementation
Step 1: Create an Instant Flow
Go to https://make.powerautomate.com
Click Create → Instant cloud flow
Name the flow
Example:
Forward Emails with Delay
Choose Manually trigger a flow
Click Create
Step 2: Add “Get emails (V3)”
Click + New step
Search for Get emails (V3)
Configure:
Folder:
Recommended → Inbox/TestInput/Draft (choose your required folder)
Top:
100 (for first testing, use 5)
✅ This action returns an array called body/value, which contains all retrieved emails.
Step 3: Add “Apply to each”
Click + New step
Select Apply to each
In Select an output from previous steps:
Choose body/value from Get emails (V3)
📌 This ensures each email is processed one at a time.
Step 4: Send an Email (V2)
Inside the Apply to each:
Click Add an action
Search for Send an email (V2)
Configure:
To:
From (Address) (or your test email)
Subject:
Subject
Body:
Forwarded email content:

@{Body}
✅ This reuses content from the original email dynamically.

Step 5: Add Delay (1 Minute)
Still inside Apply to each:
Click Add an action
Select Delay
Configure:
Count: 1
Unit: Minute
✅ This ensures controlled processing and avoids throttling or rapid email firing.

🛡️ Loop‑Safety Best Practices (Highly Recommended)
✅ Use a Dedicated Folder
Read from: Inbox/TestInput
Do not send emails into the same folder
✅ (Optional) Move Email After Processing
Add Move email (V2) at the end of the loop:
Message Id → Message Id
Target folder → Inbox/TestProcessed/Sent (you can choose any folder)
Step 6: Move email (V2)
Still inside Apply to each:
Click Add an action
Select Move email (V2)
Configure:
Message Id → Message Id
Target folder → Sent Items (you can choose any folder)
This ensures each email is processed only once.
▶️ Testing the Flow
Save the flow
Click Test → Manually
Add a few emails to your input/Draft folder
Monitor Run history
✅ You will see one email processed per minute.
🔍 Key Learnings
Apply to each + Delay is a powerful pattern
Always control email loops to prevent reprocessing
Personal or dev tenants are perfect for testing
Start small (Top = 5) and scale gradually
🎯 Final Thoughts
This pattern is extremely useful for email‑driven automations, controlled batch processing, and safe testing scenarios. It works reliably across personal, developer, and business tenants.
If you’re building more advanced flows, this setup can easily be extended with:
Filters (subject, sender, date)
Conditions
Error handling
Parallel → sequential control
**TIP**
Concurrency Control MUST Be Disabled for Delays
If Delay is inside Apply to each:
Go to Apply to each → Settings
Turn Concurrency Control = On
Set Degree of Parallelism = 1
Without this, Delay is ignored and emails may never send as expected.

Update:
A reusable unmanaged Power Automate solution and sample screenshots are available on GitHub:
https://github.com/spashikanti/power-automate-forward-email-delay-pattern