Title: How to scan past Gmail emails for invoice attachments?

Hi Arshil,

I’m using Pabbly Connect and want to scan existing Gmail emails (not only new ones) to find invoice / bill attachments.

What I’m trying to do:

• Scan old Gmail emails
• Find emails with PDF attachments
• Identify invoices or bills automatically
• Process those attachments in bulk

My questions:

• Is there a simple way to scan past emails in Gmail using Pabbly?
• Can Gmail search filters like has:attachment or filename:pdf be used?
• Any tips to avoid API limits when scanning a large number of emails?

@ArshilAhmad
Please refer to a workflow you helped me with in the past.
Instead of filtering by sender or subject, I want the workflow to automatically identify whether an attachment is a bill or an invoice, with minimum task usage.

I’ll attach a URL to the existing workflow I previously built for this automation.
Main URL: https://connect.pabbly.com/workflow/mapping/IjU3NjUwNTZlMDYzZTA0MzU1MjY4NTUzMjUxM2Ei_pc
Invoices: https://connect.pabbly.com/workflow/mapping/IjU3NjUwNTZiMDYzZjA0M2Q1MjY4NTUzNDUxM2Ii_pc
bills: https://connect.pabbly.com/workflow/mapping/IjU3NjUwNTZhMDYzMzA0MzY1MjY5NTUzNDUxM2Ii_pc

Thanks in advance for the help ?

Hello @alaa bebar,

Thank you for sharing the detailed use case and workflow URLs.

At the moment, this use case is not fully possible with Pabbly Connect. The Gmail – Find Email action is designed to return only a single email per query, even when search operators such as has:attachment or filename:pdf are used. Because of this limitation, scanning and processing multiple past emails in bulk is not currently supported.

To enable this use case, a new capability such as “Find/List Emails (multiple)” would be required. We recommend submitting this as a feature request on our roadmap using the link below. Once you’ve added the request, please share the roadmap link with us so we can track and upvote it internally:
https://roadmap.pabbly.com/b/Update-Existing-Application

Additionally, please note:

• Gmail does not return attachment URLs directly in its API responses.
• The response provides messageId and attachmentId only.
• To fetch the actual file, a separate action (Get Attachment by ID) is required using those IDs.

Once a multi-email fetch action is introduced, your workflow will be feasible using this flow with controlled task usage.