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Issue with return character breaking HTML with Gmail Automation

  • July 26, 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 56 views

JasonSears78
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I'm generating HTML emails and sending them using the Gmail automation.  They work great, except when a user puts a return character in the form used to generate the email (i.e. hits return on the keyboard inside the field (type=long text, rich text NOT enabled).  

When there's a return character, even though the HTML looks solid, and is passed directly to the gmail automation, when the email is received on the client, where the return character was a bunch of closed HTML tags are inserted ( </p> </td></table> </div> etc) which totally breaks the HTML code and makes the rendering awful.

Anyone else dealt with this?

5 replies

ScottWorld
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  • Genius
  • July 27, 2023

Other people have reported this issue in other threads... I can't remember if there was a solution or if this is just a current bug/limitation in Airtable. You may want to send an email to support@airtable.com to ask them about this.

In the meantime, the best workaround for this is to use Make's Gmail automations, which respects all HTML code, including paragraph breaks. If you need some help learning Make, I created this basic navigation video for Make. And here's my post on how you can instantly trigger an automation in Make.


JasonSears78
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  • Author
  • Participating Frequently
  • July 27, 2023

Other people have reported this issue in other threads... I can't remember if there was a solution or if this is just a current bug/limitation in Airtable. You may want to send an email to support@airtable.com to ask them about this.

In the meantime, the best workaround for this is to use Make's Gmail automations, which respects all HTML code, including paragraph breaks. If you need some help learning Make, I created this basic navigation video for Make. And here's my post on how you can instantly trigger an automation in Make.


Thanks for the validation, Scott!  I am currently using Zapier as a work-around and it works brilliantly...  I've emailed the case to support - I hope they can fix this, it's costing our nonprofit quite a bit each month to pay for third party products when Airtable ought to be doing it for us... 


ScottWorld
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  • Genius
  • July 27, 2023

Thanks for the validation, Scott!  I am currently using Zapier as a work-around and it works brilliantly...  I've emailed the case to support - I hope they can fix this, it's costing our nonprofit quite a bit each month to pay for third party products when Airtable ought to be doing it for us... 


@JasonSears78 If you aren’t already heavily invested in Zapier, I would highly recommend switching to Make. It’s about 10x cheaper than Zapier, yet it’s about 1,000,000x more powerful! Here’s a short comparison I did between Zapier and Make: Zapier vs. Make


JasonSears78
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  • July 27, 2023

@JasonSears78 If you aren’t already heavily invested in Zapier, I would highly recommend switching to Make. It’s about 10x cheaper than Zapier, yet it’s about 1,000,000x more powerful! Here’s a short comparison I did between Zapier and Make: Zapier vs. Make


Hmm, okay I'll check it out.  I assume there's a Cloudinary API - that's the only other major use case we have for Zapier - other than slack and Airtable.  Thanks - will investigate, and see if they have a nonprofit discount 🙂


ScottWorld
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  • Genius
  • July 27, 2023

Yes, Make has more native support for Cloudinary than Zapier does. Make typically has more support than Zapier does for apps.