Extract Purchase Order Data From Emails to a Spreadsheet
Last updated July 2026
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Retyping purchase orders from your inbox?
MailParse reads each PO email, pulls the fields you name (PO number, buyer, ship-to, line items, quantities, totals), and exports clean rows to Excel, CSV, or JSON. Try the order data extractor, or follow the methods below.
Purchase orders arrive by email all day: a buyer sends a PO for 12 line items, a distributor confirms a restock, a marketplace forwards an order. The numbers you need (the PO number, the SKU list, quantities, unit prices, the ship-to address, the total) sit in the message body or an HTML table, and someone on your team retypes them into a spreadsheet or your ERP. That works for a handful of orders a week. At fifty a day it becomes a full job, and every manual keystroke is a chance to fat-finger a quantity or a price.
Here is how to get purchase order data out of email and into a spreadsheet, from the manual route to a parser that reads every incoming PO on its own, so your team stops copying and starts checking.
How do I extract data from a purchase order email?
To extract data from a purchase order email, forward or connect the mailbox to an email parser, name the fields you want (PO number, buyer, line items, quantity, unit price, total, ship-to), and the parser writes each order to a row and exports it as Excel, CSV, or JSON. For a one-off PO you can copy the values by hand, but a parser pays off the moment orders arrive regularly from more than one or two senders.
What fields can you pull from a PO email?
A parser reads whatever sits in the message body or an HTML table as text. On a typical purchase order that means the PO number, order date, buyer and vendor names, billing and ship-to addresses, payment terms, and the line item table with SKU, description, quantity, unit price, and line total. When line items are laid out as an HTML table in the email, each row becomes its own spreadsheet row, so a five-line PO produces five rows tied to the same PO number. Values that only exist inside a PDF attachment are a different job, covered below.
How do I get purchase orders into Excel or a spreadsheet?
Connect Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365, or any IMAP mailbox to the parser, or upload the PO emails you have saved as .eml or .msg files. Pick which fields become columns, add any custom field the buyer includes (a project code, a requested delivery date), and export to a formatted .xlsx workbook, a CSV for your ERP import, or JSON for an API. Every order lands as a row, so you get one clean sheet you can sort, filter, and reconcile instead of a folder of messages.
| Method | Runs on its own | Handles line item tables | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy and paste by hand | No | You retype each row | A few one-off orders |
| Power Automate flow | Yes | Only if you build the logic | One steady sender, a flow you maintain |
| Email parser | Yes | Yes, each line becomes a row | Regular POs from several senders |
Capabilities as of July 2026. Confirm any tool's current behavior before you rely on it.
Can I automate purchase order data entry?
Yes. Connect the mailbox once, set up the fields, and every new PO that lands is parsed and appended to your sheet or pushed to your system automatically, with no one touching it. Most teams add a quick review step so a person eyeballs totals before the data flows into the ERP, which keeps the speed of automation and the safety of a second look. Once an order is approved, you can route it straight into your purchase order workflow so approvals, matching, and fulfillment stay in one place.
Can a parser read a PO that comes as a PDF attachment?
Not on its own. An email parser reads the message body and HTML tables, and it records each attachment by filename, type, and size, but it does not open a PDF and pull values out of it. If your buyers send the purchase order as a typed email or an HTML table, a parser handles it end to end. If the PO arrives as a PDF or a scan, you want a document extraction tool for the file itself, then feed those values into the same spreadsheet. Email parsing and document parsing are two different jobs, and knowing which one you need saves a lot of wasted setup.
What about order confirmations and shipping notices?
They work the same way. An order confirmation, a dispatch note, and a tracking email all carry structured values in the body, and the same parser that reads your POs can read those too, so the whole order lifecycle lands in one sheet. Pull the order number and total from the confirmation, then the carrier and tracking number from the shipping alert, and you have a live view of every order without asking anyone for a status update.
Getting started
Start with a week of real purchase order emails, not a clean sample. Connect the mailbox, name the fields your team actually keys in today, and run the batch. Check the line item rows and the totals against a few known orders, then turn on the automatic run so new POs append themselves. From there you can send the sheet to Excel, export a CSV for your ERP, or hand structured JSON to a developer through the email parser API. If your orders arrive as confirmations rather than formal POs, the guide on extracting order data from confirmation emails covers that flavor in detail.