Converting accented characters

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Posted on by CU20121206-0

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I couldn't find any way to convert accented characters other than humongous pieces of code and formulas that 90% of the time just don't work?
In MS SQL I can use TRANSLATE. But in Dataverse, everything that I find is to use Power Automate, or use substitute (which never works).

Thanks for the help.

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Microsoft Dataverse

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CU20121206-0 2 on at

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Converting accented characters

@Mark Nanneman

I ended up finding this little solution here:
Solved: Re: Convert names to email address - Power Platform Community

But thanks for the tips, man.
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Mark Nanneman 989 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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Converting accented characters

It is annoying that Power Automate doesn't have a function to convert strings to HTML friendly text.

In Power Automate I liked to use Fetch XML queries (as opposed to OData filters) to filter Dataverse rows that might have a single quote ( ' ) in the name. It will unfortunately still break if there are certain other reserved characters (like say an ampersand or a double quote). For those I use a couple replace actions to convert them to HTML entity equivalents.

Basically a formual like this works 99% of the time:

replace( replace( replace( replace(triggerBody()?['text'], '&', '&'), '<', '<' ), '>', '>' ), '"', '"' )

You can create your Fetch XML search by opening the table in question in a Model Driven App and clicking "Edit filters"

Then write something like this (I put a placeholder in {{ just so it's easier to find in the final XML).

Click "Download FetchXML and open it in a notepad, then copy and paste it in your flow.

Replace the placeholder variable with a dynamic reference. Here I just drop in a compose action that does the replace functions for ampersands etc.

Example, searching for A&W

Hope that helps!