OK….that title was a bit of a mouthful - but it’s a little difficult to categorise what is essentially a kind of hack!

Recently, I felt it was advisable to start regularly recording my blood pressure results (comes with age I’m afraid).

I managed to locate a pretty decent BP Excel spreadsheet template (here), which I slightly altered to suite my own requirements. Whilst spreadsheets are clearly an excellent tool for this sort of data capture, I found the data entry process slightly frustrating - especially on mobile.

I fully accept that Excel data entry, even on a mobile device is significantly better than it ever used to be, but nevertheless it still felt a little clumsy.

My immediate go-to was Microsoft Forms - I would use Power Automate to populate the aforementioned spreadsheet with results. This way I could also add any additional auto date/time calculations etc to reduce further data entry on the mobile device.

It was here that I hit a rather frustrating block; to my annoyance it transpires that personal Office 365 accounts do not have a Power Automate connector for Microsoft Forms. In short, if it’s not a school or enterprise Office account, you cannot seemingly use Power Automate to populate an existing spreadsheet from a Microsoft Form.

Determined not to be beaten by this restriction, I started to think of alterative approaches. It could be argued that in many ways the solution I came up with is even easier than completing a MS Form - if a little unconventional.

In short, I’m using the Subject Line of an email to technically “send” data to the spreadsheet and I must say, it works beautifully.

So here’s the process.

1. I send myself an email using the following format in the subject title: MBP/125/87/60/L - this format equates to:
   • MBP (My Blood Pressure)/
   • Systolic (higher reading)/
   • Diastolic (lower reading)/
   • Heart Rate/
   • Left or Right Arm
2. PowerAutomate is set to trigger when it receives an email with the Subject Title starting MPB.

3. I create an “ARM” string variable (for use later in recording which “arm” was used) and I extract the Subject Title field from the email (using “Html to text”).

4. PowerAutomate then splits the Subject Title into an array of values - each value separated by the forward slash “/” in the email Subject Title field.

5. These values are assigned to four individual compose functions by extracting each appropriate array position from the previous Split function.

6. I then create an appropriate calculation for the current time (localised).

8. Next I create a switch statement to decide whether the ARM variable should be set to “left arm” or “right arm” - based on whether the letter “L” was used in the email Subject Title field.

9. PowerAutomate then populates the BP spreadsheet template with the compose output values, ARM variable and associated date/time fields.

10. PowerAutomate finally deletes the email.

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The result, is a fully populated spreadsheet from just sending a one line subject email.

…..it also get’s around the current lack of support for MS Forms integration.

Ideally, you would include some error trapping and/or Try Catches etc to ensure a more robust solution - but the basic principle works very well indeed.