Preserving Line Breaks from mutliline text SharePoint field in a Select action for HTML Table

[Fsomers68]

Hi Everyone, 

I have a flow that gets all the items in a SharePoint list that were modified the day before and it sends me a summary email.  I create my table using a Select control: 

The issue is the Notes field that is a multiline text field.  When the email generates, it does not provide the line breaks that we enter in the SharePoint field: 

Appears this way in the table in my email: 

Everything else populates exactly how I want it except this multiline of text SharePoint field.  

Can anyone point me in the right direction on how I can go from my Get Items-->Select field input so that the line breaks are preserved? Full flow snapshot below

[Chriddle]

In HTML email a line break is a HTML tag: <br>

[Fsomers68]

Yes, but I just don't know how/where to insert that in the code to bring that dynamic Notes field forward with the line breaks from the SharePoint column. 

[Fsomers68]

@Pstork1 Hi - I saw your post trying to help someone in a similar position as me (SharePoint Multiline Column - Line Breaks Missing ... - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)) but I am not following where/why there is an Apply To Each.  

I've taken additional screenshots as to what I have above in my original post trying to incorporate your advice. Can you assist me in getting to the finish line on this issue that has been plaguing me for some time? 

I add the Initialize Variable after my Get Items

I get an error when I try to save, presumably because I don't have an Apply To Each loop: 

Flow save failed with code 'InvalidTemplate' and message 'The template validation failed: 'The repetition action(s) 'Apply_to_each' referenced by 'inputs' in action 'Initialize_variable' are not defined in the template.'.'.

Currently in my Select action, I try to make the Notes field a smaller size and you can see where we do other HTML manipulation in other fields.After Select, I build the HTML table (is this supposed to be nested in a loop?? Then I did your Replace action in a separate compose after the table is created. We do a condition so if there aren't any items, no email get sent.

Part of my Outlook send an email: 

The first Outputs is our CSS Table Styling injection. 

The first Replace is the one where the formula is showing. 

The second Replace is your Replace formula, but I assume that isn't needed there. 

This is from the body of my email to account for the other HTML manipulations we do in our Select action.

Editing to add full screenshot of compacted flow actions (everything preceding the Get Items is just a test to say if it's a Holiday, don't run the flow so that doesn't impact Get items and beyond: 

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

An Apply to each is only needed if you are building your HTML table line by line. If you are creating an array using Data Select then you need to do two things.  In the cell where you are loading the content from the multiline field you need to replace the linefeeds with some other unique character or characters. YOu can use '<br/>' but it will be converted to escaped text.  Then after you convert the array into an HTML table you need to do a replace on the table to replace each instance of those characters with an actual <br/>.  I've added screenshots from a simple example below.  My column is called Task Details. The column in the data select is

replace(item()?['TaskDetails'],decodeUriComponent('%0A'),'<br />')

Then the HTML table is processed as

replace(body('Create_HTML_table'),'&lt;br /&gt;', '<br/>')

You can see how the <br/> was converted to '&lt;br /&gt;' in the data select.  That's why you need to process the table after its created.

[Fsomers68]

Thank you. I need to take a closer look at what's going on. Somehow it's now pulling a different field than 'Notes' (which I subbed in for where you had 'TaskDetails' and it doesn't make any sense why it's doing that. 

[Pstork1]

For now just pull my code out of the select and use the field.  Once you have that you can see what the JSON for that field should be when you hover over it in the Data Select.  Then you can edit and reinsert the code to do the replace.

[Fsomers68]

I can't thank you enough. I somehow had the Notes field named as Notes0 so that worked. I am so happy I could cry. Have a GREAT weekend!!!