AirTable Automations Are Breaking My Links

[xavier_williams]

I have built an automation that fires off an email to a key stake holder with information found in different fields.
One of these fields contains a link. When the automation fires, the email is sent along with a slack notification.

The slack notifaction contains the same information the email should, BUT the link in the email is altered by the automation and the link in the slack message seemingly works.

The automation is grabbing the same URL from the same field. I am not sure why the URL is changes in the email but not the slack message.

To add additional information, the email is removing the under-scores from the URL and the Slack message is not.

Can anyone help?

[xavier_williams]

I gave that a shot, and it did not work either.

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

Kamille_Parks:

It may have something to do with Email’s message field doing something weird with markdown formatting.

I ran a quick test that confirmed this markdown connection. Apparently the field data is inserted before markdown processing occurs, so underscores that come from fields are viewed as italics highlight markers.

The way I got the second URL to pass through was by using a formula field that adds a backslash before each underscore. It was a longshot because backslashes are often used in strings to “escape” a character that should not be processed normally (e.g. quotes in strings), and sure enough it works to “escape” the underscores so that the markdown process ignores them. Here’s my formula:

SUBSTITUTE(URL, "_", "\_")

Insert that formula field in the email body, and it’ll work.

[Jeannie_Ruesch_]

Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this if it’s just a test field? I have values with underscores in them that are getting stripped out with the email automation.
example:
Company_Campaign_Date_032421

I tried the above fix but I just get a blank in that spot on the email send.
Thanks!

[Justin_Barrett]

@Jeannie_Ruesch_BDC Can you share a screenshot showing what you tried? I’m guessing something might be a little off, but without seeing the details it’s hard to say what that might be.

[kuovonne]

You can also try inserting the url in markdown format. [square brackets around the text to display](https://parenthesis.around.the.actual.link) make sure there is no space between the closing square bracket and the opening parentheses.

[ScottWorld]

kuovonne:

You can also try inserting the url in markdown format. [square brackets around the text to display](https://parenthesis.around.the.actual.link)

Sadly, this only works when the field is a normal URL field, or if you hardcode the URL into the message body itself.

If the field is a formula field that results in a URL, it fails. :frowning:

I’m going to report this to support@airtable.com, and hopefully they will fix this at some point.

[Daniel_St_Louis]

Kamille_Parks:

are

Hi! I can’t get this to work. Do you know if this solution is still possible? When i try to make a formula field that uses your formula, the link is still broken when inserted into the email.

[Luis_Mendes]

The quickest way I got this to work was by setting the text to Markdown syntax. Using tick marks… It removes font formatting, but it maintains “_” without having to create yet another column.

apiKey is your secret API token.

[Babak_Farzami]

FWIW. I had the same exact issue that started this thread and followed the instructions presented by kuovonne (above) and it worked for me. Thank you.

[Hieu_Ha]

me too. When I inserted a field into the body email, it’s show the whole url in the result.