Start Approval emails not showing line breaks

[TonyB]

I've had this flow running a while, but its just started putting \n where line breaks need to go. Anyone come across this or know a fix?

[thenewblack]

No answer but just reporting the same behaviour with one of my Flows.

[Anonymous]

I've got the exact same problem and before I found this post I had just posted in the Using Flows forum with some more screenshots.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Using-Flows/Flow-Approval-Email-showing-Markdown-n-n/m-p/176260

Seems something has changed since last week as was working fine last week.

[TonyB]

**bleep**, looks like MS have busted something.

[v-yamao-msft]

Hi @TonyB, @Anonymous, @thenewblack,

Thanks for feedback.

The issue can be reproduced on my side.

I will help report it and back to you later.

Thanks for your understating.

Best regards,

Mabel

[v-yamao-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @TonyB,

I have some updates for you.

A fix will be rolling out this week.

Best regards,

Mabel

[thomas_schick]

Tables also seem to be affected. This Flow used to work:

Now it shows this:

[Dinos]

It's working fine on the iOS outlook and Flow app. Not on computer. 

[TonyB]

Hi This is not fixed. The \n is gone but its still not allowing line breaks.

Everything comes out on one line.

[kagoodm]

I agree...doesn't seem to be completely resolved.  The \n is gone but all the text is together rather than recognizing the line breaks.  If I put a blank space between each line, it looks ok, but not if I just have multiple lines with no blank spaces between rows.

[Anonymous]

Hi.

This functionality seems to still be very badly broken. When will the fix roll out? It is blocking a deliverable.

Tony

[Anonymous]

Also, if I add more than one line feed per line, I get a blank test box.

[Anonymous]

When using MS Flow to send MS Form data to Azure DevOps (to create work item), it will not allow me to create spaces between lines. 

Desired Formtat (inputted in MS Flow):

Customer Name: [MS FORM INPUTTED NAME]

Customer's Email: [MS FORM INPUTTED EMAIL]

...

Format that appears in DevOps:

Customer Name: [MS FORM INPUTTED NAME] Customer's Email: [MS FORM INPUTTED EMAIL] ...

I have tried copy and pasting from Word/Notepad, using Alt+Enter when creating line spaces, adding two line spaces between each line, and even adding backslashes between lines. Nothing has worked, and an urgent deliverable is reliant on this Flow working properly. Please fix ASAP.

[Anonymous]

It's bad enough that we have yet another markup language to google, and now it won't even do line breaks. WHY IN THE WORLD can't we just have HTML formatting for these approvals? This is so ridiculous. Sometimes Powerapps/Flow are awesome, but in times like this, I want to abandon the product completely.

DO BETTER Microsoft!

[Anonymous]

Fun fact: In outlook, Flow superimposes over the email with it's formatiing and UI. The underalying message is actually formatted properly, but users can't see or interact with it without clicking "show original message". I'm kinda done at this point. The answer to UI difficulties shouldn't be a plugin that hides the native UI.

I just abandonded Flow. No response, and no timeline to fix. Using approval workflows in JIRA ServiceDesk, or ServiceNow, or Salesforce, is straighforward and contained within the product, which is FINE.

The only reason we can't use Sharepoint + Flow is because Sharepoint chooses to display field data in a sidebar. Not enough room. So many siloed design decisions make for a bad user experience. 0/10 will not flow again.

I really wanted this to work.

[johnsoep]

Any update on this? My organization is starting to look at using Microsoft Forms and Flow to replace some of our paper forms that students need to fill out. It would be really great to be able to format the approval notices taht go out.

[Anonymous]

I actually made a ticket with Microsoft, and surprisingly, they were able to admit it was wrong, and that the development team was working on it. No estimate of when it would be released, but updates do come pretty steadily, and I've also never had them confirm a bug so quickly (even though I've reported a few over the years). 

So, I think that's good news. 

I hear you John, I have like 7 flows in the pipeline, and this is, as I told the MS rep, "completely ridiculous". 

[Anonymous]

This is not an acceptable solution per the comment thread that follows. Please provide and update to this issue as it is causing customers serious concerns about whether or not to continue with your service.

[bclarkuncc]

Any update?

[Juice_Cooran]

Hi all,

I've been trying to implement line breaks in these approval flows for weeks. I've tried:

• Double spaces
• <br/>
• __ [double underscore]
• &npsb; (or whatever that is)

and others with no avail. My workaround that is finally working is to use Markdown supported non-numbered lists, so my approval body is now:

* **Data 1:** [dynamic data]

* **Data 2:** [dynamic data]

* **Data 3:** [dynamic data]

Which displays as

• Data 1: [data]
• Data 2: [data]
• Data 3: [data]

btw this is in Approvals (v2)