Guidance

Planning teams: access automated email responses for local plan consultations

Learn how to access and update a database generated by the Microsoft Outlook automation. 

From:
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Published
27 February 2025

Applies to England

Working with your IT department, you should have been able to install the email automation. 

Now you can find out how to access the email response database, export the data, and update it if you need to.

Access and use the database 

If you’ve successfully tested the automation and everything is working properly, you should now be able to use the database.  

  1. Go to your SharePoint site.  

  2. Select the Settings gear icon and then Site contents.  

  3. There will be a folder called Planning Consultation Emails – select this folder to open it. 

  4. There will be a sub-folder with the name of the list you created during the set-up process. All emails are stored in this folder.  

  5. Update the status of any downloaded email by selecting the individual row the email is on.  

  6. A new panel will appear with all the details of that specific email, and you can edit the status from this panel.

Export your data 

Once you’ve accessed your spreadsheet, you need to export it before you can use it. 

  1. Go to your SharePoint site and select Export at the top of the page.  

  2. Choose Export to Excel and download the file.  

  3. Open your file in Excel.  

You’ll be able to see most of the email data, including the location in SharePoint where the email is saved. You will not be able to see any attachment data except the number of files that were attached. 

Updating your exported database  

Even after you’ve exported the database, you can still pull new emails through to it by following these steps. 

The database will only export unread emails. If you have manually opened a response, you must mark it as Unread again for it to be exported. 

You will need to ask an IT specialist to manually run the automation before following the steps below.  

  1. Open your downloaded Excel spreadsheet.

  2. Select the Data tab at the top of the Excel spreadsheet. 

  3. Select Refresh all. This will bring any new emails that are in the database through to your Excel spreadsheet.  

  4. Select Save once you’ve done this so you do not lose any data.   

Share your feedback 

If you implement the automation yourself, we’d like to hear your feedback and any suggestions for improvement. You can share your thoughts at digitalplanningteam@communities.gov.uk

Updates to this page

Published 27 February 2025

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