Preventing SharePoint List Item text from encoding

[AS2021]

I've got a flow set up which get items from a SharePoint list and pushes them to an array, as such:

I then filter this array against another array created from an Excel file in the same flow. The problem I am having is that the items in the array made from the SharePoint list are being encoded, for example & is changing into &. This doesn't happen with the array created from the Excel file, so when the two arrays are compared, these items are not matching up.

Is there any way to prevent this happening to the SharePoint items?

[v-litu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @AS2021,

& is HTML for "Start of a character reference".

& is the character reference for "An ampersand".

If the text comes from a rich text column, it will use "&" instead of "&".

As a workaround, you could use the replace() function to convert "&" to "&", for example:

replace(item()?['RichText'],'&','&')

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[AS2021]

Thank you for your suggestion. I've tried adding this step in but I'm getting the following error:

Would it be possible convert the rich text once I've initially gotten the items from the SharePoint list but before I start adding the items to the array?

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @AS2021,

It seems that there are some items' rich text column is empty, you could use empty() function + condition action check if the column value has value.

If true, means there is no value, do nothing;

Or use replace() function process the character "&".

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.