Question mark appeared next to phone number in field

[Jennifer_Willia]

Hi! I imported an Excel spreadsheet into a new Base. When I did, some of the addresses and phone numbers had a question mark appear next to them. What is this and how can I get rid of it? 434-332-8227�

[M_k]

Hi @Jennifer_Williams1

I think this has to do with encoding, if I understand correctly, it has to do with origin of the data.

The other option would be to try Google Sheets and see if that might help.

Or perhaps you can take a look at this post for a possible solution.

Formula to replace special characters - slug creation Ask the community

Hi Andrés, I have the same issue. What I did was add a column with the same formula you just posted. And then, I added another column which “transforms” that column into UPPERCASE. In my case I did this to get my Client Names “standard”. If you are aiming to have a url-friendly maybe you could do the same but with LOWERCASE. I hope that helps.

Hope it helps.

Mary Kay

If this helps to resolve the issue, can you check mark the solution. Thank you! :grinning:

[Jason · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jennifer_Williams1,

Something else you can check is if the file is encoded in Unicode (UTF 😎 format. You’ll want to be sure you have that selected when exporting from Excel.

For certain programs (such as Mac Excel 2011) that don’t support UTF 8, another option is to simply copy/paste the data from Excel into Airtable (click here for a guide on this).

Another possible workaround is to convert the CSV file to a different encoding, by opening the CSV in Sublime Text (http://www.sublimetext.com). Then click File -> Save With Encoding -> UTF-8 LE with BOM.