Remove Byte Marks "%EF%BB%BF" added to Formula URL

[Tiberius]

Hi, I am generating a URL by concatenating a URL string and then the Airtable record ID. Between my URL string and that ID, there is always a byte mark like “%EF%BB%BF” added (for example, when using the URL in an email automation). Any way to remove that since the URL leads to a 404 otherwise?

[Per_Carlen]

How are you concatinating the the URL string and the record ID? I don’t get a BOM when I concatenate and send that URL in an email. I get som extra text string though. Weird.

[Tiberius]

I did CONCATENATE(“URL-String”, {Record ID})
Or just “URL-String” & {Record ID}. Both caused the BOM.

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

I helped someone else with this exact issue the other day, though the data was different (a number, not a URL):

Hidden character issue using Airtable with Zapier Automations

I have an integer from Airtable going to Zapier to use as a filename for a PDF, but the file that comes back to Airtable is named “20201140719%EF%BB%BF.pdf” instead of “20201140719.pdf” It’s some kind of UTF-8 Byte Order Mark or something. I thought it might be a hidden character in the text field in Airtable, so I converted to an integer, but that didn’t fix it. [Screen Shot 2021-09-20 at 6.51.46 AM]

How are you creating the ID? Your latest example is using a field reference, so my hunch is that this field is likely a formula that uses the RECORD_ID() function. However, this function can be added directly to your other formula:

"URL-String" & RECORD_ID()

If you still get the BOM, you could try wrapping one or both pieces in the TRIM() function, which is supposed to strip whitespace from the ends.

"URL-String" & TRIM(RECORD_ID())

…or…

TRIM("URL-String") & TRIM(RECORD_ID())

[Tiberius]

That worked, thank you!

[BeFormidable]

I'm late to the party but I'm dropping this here for anyone else who encounters this problem because I've just struggled with it for a couple of weeks now.

I came across the following on Stack Overflow:

%EF%BB%BF is an percent encoded byte sequence of ZERO WIDTH NON-BREAKING SPACE(aka BOM in UTF-16/UTF-32). In UTF-8, it's just an extra character.

---

It get's introduced into Airtable automations when copy/pasting from one automation to another by highlighting an entire string of text including the variable, and then pasting that into another automation.

Doing so adds the variable plus a plain text label of the variable on a new line, plus at least one "zero width non-breaking space".

It's easy to delete the plain text label because it's visible, but the "zero width non-breaking space" (i.e. completely invisible UTF-8 character that breaks urls) is, well, invisible and not so easy to find.

It sounds like it might be introduced into other Airtable fields in a similar way.

Just delete the line with the offending url and start fresh without pasting anything and that will resolve the problem by deleting the "zero width non-breaking space" in the process.

[Renan_Lobo]

That worked, thank you!

[Charley]

Perfect.  I lost a couple of hours to this one.