Smartsheet Basics
Smartsheet Basics
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Form not auto populating fields if one column cell contains a comma
I'm using a form that when triggered, populates several fields from a source sheet then posts to a another sheet. I've noticed that if the column titled "Description" has a comma in the text of a cell, such as image 1 below, then the form will not auto populate all of the fields that I want. It will also stop populating the text from the description column at the comma. I assume SmartSheet must treat a comma in text as a stop, is that correct? Even if that is so, I'm curious why it doesn't populate all fields that are sourced from other columns if one cell has a comma in its text.
Below are some images for an example. In Image 1, the top cell has a comma after "In Workday". When I trigger my form and it opens to display several fields that should auto populate we see that Tester Name, Scenario ID, and Functional Area are not populated (image 2). If I remove the comma from the text in image 1, then trigger the form again, we see that Tester Name, Scenario ID, and Functional Area auto populated as expected (image 3).
What is going on here?
Image 1:
Image 2:
Image 3:
Answers
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Hi @jdswift
Use URL percent-encoding to include a space or other special character like "," in your URL.
Include special characters in the query string
If you want to include a space or other special character in your URL, you need to use URL percent encoding. The following table includes a few common special characters you can use and their percent encoding values. These characters are also known as escape characters.Character space
%20
Comma (,)
%2C
In the demo sheet below, I used the SUBSTITUTE function to replace them.
[UpdateFormLink]
=FormURL# + SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE("?Task=" + Task@row + "&Assignee=" + Assignee@row + "&Tester Name=" + [Tester Name]@row + "&Scenario ID=" + [Scenario ID]@row + "&Test Scenario=" + [Test Scenario]@row + "&Functional Area=" + [Functional Area]@row + "&Description=" + Description@row, " ", "%20"), ",", "%2C")
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Thank you for the reply. I don't need the comma in the text, so I simply removed it. The question is more of why does that comma cause the other fields not to populate? It seems like they should be independent of each other.
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The fields are populated by the text string that makes up the URL. Commas are not valid characters in URLs (thus the need to percent encode them). The string to the left of the comma is still a valid URL, so it still works. Everything after that is just a text string.
If you look at the URL in the cell that is being populated by your formula, you'll see this in action. Everything before the comma will be underlined and a different color just like every other hyperlink, but the comma and everything after will be your base text color and formatting.
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