Spreadsheets (Outlook)

The Outlook connector reads mail and attachments directly out of a single Office 365 mailbox. It's built for teams whose working data — spreadsheets, exports, reports — lands as email attachments rather than in a shared drive. You sign in with the mailbox's own Microsoft account, point the connector at the folders you care about, and it syncs from there on a schedule.

At a glance

Authentication	OAuth login (Sign in with Microsoft)
Streams	Configured per mailbox folder (not a fixed list)
Custom queries	Not supported

What you can sync

The connector reads the mailbox over IMAP, scoped to whatever the signed-in account can already see.

• Attachments (e.g. spreadsheet exports) from the folders you configure
• Message content from those same folders
• Only the signed-in user's own mailbox — never anyone else's

Prerequisites

• A Microsoft/Office 365 account for the mailbox you want to sync — the connector acts as that account and reads only its own mail.
• IMAP enabled for that mailbox — this is independent of everything else below. If IMAP is switched off organisation-wide or for this specific mailbox in Exchange Online, the sync will fail even after sign-in succeeds. Worth checking with IT before you start, not after.
• IT admin approval, in some organisations — less often needed than for SharePoint, but possible. See below.

Setup

In Outlook / Office 365

1. Confirm IMAP is enabled for the mailbox you want to sync (ask your IT admin if you're not sure — it's an Exchange Online setting, not something you toggle from your own inbox).
2. Note the mailbox address and the folders you want synced.

In Meltano Cloud

1. Add the Spreadsheets (Outlook) data source.
2. Enter the mailbox email address and the folders/attachments to sync.
3. Click Login with Microsoft. You'll be redirected to Microsoft's own sign-in page.
4. Sign in with the mailbox's Microsoft/Office 365 account and review the consent screen.
5. If you can self-consent, click Accept and you're redirected back — the connection completes automatically.
6. If you see "Approval required / Ask your admin" instead, your IT administrator needs to approve the app first. See below.
7. Once consent is granted, Meltano stores a refresh token securely so scheduled syncs keep running without repeated sign-ins.

If your IT team needs to approve first

This comes up less often than it does for SharePoint, but it's worth knowing why, and what to do if it does.

Why it happens: Outlook access uses a single scope, IMAP.AccessAsUser.All, which Microsoft classifies as low impact. That means most tenants let users self-consent to it. An admin prompt only appears if your organisation has tightened consent settings further than the default (for example, "do not allow user consent" at all).

What's actually being requested (nothing more than this):

Permission	What it grants
IMAP.AccessAsUser.All	Read access to the signed-in user's own mailbox over IMAP — never another mailbox, never org-wide access
offline_access	Lets scheduled syncs keep running without re-authenticating every time

There is no write access requested, no directory or user data access, and no tenant-wide permission.

What to hand your IT admin, if you do hit the prompt: ask them to grant admin consent via Entra admin centre → Enterprise applications → Consent and permissions, or check Enterprise applications → Admin consent requests if your tenant routes it through a request queue. Once granted, other users in your organisation can connect without hitting the same prompt.

Available streams

There's no fixed stream list — what you sync is the mail and attachment content from the folders you configure. Point the connector at different folders and you're syncing different content.

Need help?

If IMAP is enabled and consent is granted but a sync still isn't pulling the attachments you expect, file it through the usual Meltano support channel with the mailbox and folder path involved.