Fix Power Automate Approval Not Sending Email Notifications
Question details
Users need to resolve an issue where email notifications are not being sent to approvers in a Power Automate flow.
- Product
- Microsoft Power Automate
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- A Power Automate flow successfully reaches the 'Start and wait for an approval' step and logs the approval in the system, but does not send the initial email alert.
- Observed behavior
- The assigned approver does not receive an email notification until subsequent approvals within the flow are completed.
Verify that the assigned approver's email address is correctly spelled in the flow configuration and ask the approver to check their Junk or Spam folders for missing Microsoft Flow notifications.
Review the Approval Action Configuration
Ensure the 'Start and wait for an approval' action is properly configured and not suppressed by flow settings.
In some instances, the 'Enable Notifications' setting might be toggled off, or the email addresses might be formatted incorrectly in the Assigned To field, causing the email step to fail silently while the approval itself is still created in the system.
Navigate to the Power Automate portal, select 'My flows', and click the 'Edit' button on the flow experiencing the issue.
Locate the 'Start and wait for an approval' step. Verify that the 'Assigned To' field contains valid email addresses separated by semicolons.
Click 'Show advanced options' within the approval step and ensure that 'Enable Notifications' is set to 'Yes'.
Consult the Power Automate Community
Since this is a known issue within the Microsoft ecosystem, community forums are the best place to find recent patches or workarounds.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why do Power Automate approvals appear in Teams but not in email?
Depending on your organization's notification settings and Microsoft ecosystem integration, approval requests may be routed directly to the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams instead of generating an email notification.
Can I manually resend a Power Automate approval email?
Power Automate does not feature a built-in 'resend' button for standard approvals. To send another notification, you must either configure a reminder loop within the flow design or manually cancel the current flow run and trigger it again.
Do Power Automate approval emails often go to the spam folder?
Yes, if your organization or personal email provider uses strict spam filters, automated emails originating from 'maccount@microsoft.com' might be flagged as junk. Whitelisting this address can resolve delivery issues.
