Is there a way to insert formatting into a long text field from the Update Record action in automations? I tried adding some markdown and it came through as plain text. Also, I’d like to add a carriage return to separate two lines of text. Is there a secret character I can put in to make that happen?
Yes, if the long text field is configured to accept rich text, you can use Airtable’s flavor of Markdown to add formatting. See this support article for more info. For example, I have some formula fields that create paragraphs of text with Markdown formatting, and then an automation copies the formula result to the rich text field.
If you are typing the text into the Update action, just press Enter between the two lines of text. If you are using a formula field to generate your text, use "\n" to insert a newline character. For example…
"This is the first line.\nThis is the second line."
I had forgotten to turn on formatting. So that takes care of that. However, when I press Enter between two lines of text, it will not insert a new line. Is this a limitation of the update record action?
I’m not using a formula field, I am appending to a notes field, so what I’d like to have is:
new note text
old note text
older note text
etc.
The update record action can add new lines to a long text field. Can you post a screen shot of the update action configuration, the inputs, and the result? Make sure that there actually is a new line character between the new text and old text, and not just text wrapping around.
Sometimes when it is hard to tell if there actually a new line character, I’ll press enter multiple times to get it to show up, and then delete the extras based on what the test shows.
Just figured it out. Hitting enter wasn’t working, but hitting Shift+Enter finally gave me a new line. It’s always the dumb solutions.
Everything is now working as it should. Thanks @Kuovonne!
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