Auto-categorize Outlook emails into color categories with GPT-4o

This workflow fetches recent emails from Outlook and uses OpenAI to assign a category (e.g., Red, Yellow, Green). It then updates each message’s category in Outlook.

⚙️ Setup Instructions

1️⃣ Set Up Outlook Connection

1. In n8n → Credentials → New → Microsoft Outlook OAuth2 API
2. Log in with your Outlook account & approve access
3. Attach this credential to the Get Messages from Outlook and Update Category nodes in the workflow
4. (Optional) Adjust the limit field in Get Messages from Outlook if you want more/less than 5 results

2️⃣ Set Up OpenAI Connection

1. Go to the OpenAI Platform
2. Navigate to OpenAI Billing
3. Add funds to your billing account
4. Copy your API key into the OpenAI credentials in n8n and select it on the OpenAI Chat Model and Categorizing Agent nodes

✅ Notes

• The agent reads subject + bodyPreview and returns a JSON category.
• The Update Category node writes that category back to Outlook.
• You can tweak the category names or logic in the Categorizing Agent system message.

📬 Contact

Need help customizing the categorization rules or routing categories to folders?

• 📧 [email protected]
• 🔗 Robert Breen
• 🌐 ynteractive.com