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Hi! I am trying to use Zapier to send an automated email to a Client when their record in Airtable updates. I’ve got a rollup field that contains the products they’ve purchased, and I’m using the Zapier Formatter Utility to split them into separate lines (ideally, they’d appear as bullets in the email).

But it’s not working.

I’ve used an ArrayUnique formula and each item appears with a comma between. Here is what I am getting with the SPLIT TEXT utility: 

 

Step 2: Split Text
Step 2: Split Text

 

The data out in this step seems to be correctly splitting out the items
The data out in this step seems to be correctly splitting out the items

 

So I got to Step 3 to create the email. And this is what I am allowed to select for the portion of the email where I want to display those above items, each on their own line (ideally with bullets):

 

Output from previous step is appearing with the comma separator, not as individual lines. Why?
Output from previous step is appearing with the comma separator, not as individual lines. Why?

 

So I select that output for the email body
So I select that output for the email body

 

And when I sent myself the test email, the items are not on their own line (not a huge surprise because the Output I selected shows them with a comma).

And as we would expect, it shows up like this.
And as we would expect, it shows up like this.

 

I feel like I am missing something here. Ugh. Help! :) 

Thanks so much!

Laura 

Hey ​@Laura Pitney, 

 

It looks like the issue is occurring with the first Split Text step, because the input fields is a line-item array. So when the formatter tries to split on the comma it creates a nested array

 

My recommendation would be to replace the first Split Text with a Formatter Utilities > Line-item to text step. This will convert the line-item array into a string of text, as well as split the line-item into separate fields.

 

You can then either use the ‘Text’ value from the Utilities step to use a Split Text step on or you can map the separate fields from the Utilities values into the HTML formatting. 

 

Hope this helps! 

 

 

Hi ​@peter.harrison - thanks for your response! So, I’m a little unsure what I am doing wrong because I think that this step is already using the Split Text to line-items. Here’s a screenshot of my configuration

Step 2 configuration using the Split Text function to line-items (I think?!)

 

The value I am choosing as the input from Airtable has each “item” separated by a comma. I want them to appear in my email as bullets, each on their own line. (I know I already said that, but obviously I’m missing something here.)

 

Thank you so much for your help!

Laura

Hey @Laura Pitney, 

 

The “Line-item to text” action that Peter mentioned is different than the “Split Text” step you’re currently using. The “Split Text” action only works for incoming text that is a “string” (even though it can output that split text as line-items - which is what I’m seeing in your screenshot.

Instead, you would want to adjust the action of that step to Utilities, and then in Transform dropdown menu, select the Line-item to Text option.

This specific option expects the incoming data to be line-items, means that it can then handle them appropriately.

 

This process is also talked about here: https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496308258189-Convert-line-items-into-text-strings

Hope that helps you out!

Hi ​@Laura Pitney 

Try using this Zap action: Formatter > Utilities > Line Items to Text

OR

Try these Zap steps:

  • Action: Formatter > Utilities > Line Items to Text
    • This will flatten the data to a text string
  • Action: Formatter > Text > Split

 

Issue is because the Formatter Split is resulting in nested line items due to how the underlying format of the data from Airtable.

​@Troy Tessalone thank you! Ok, so I’m sharing screenshots below of the steps because when I get to “Formatter > Text > Split” I’m unable to choose an input that would always return every item. 

 

 

 

STEP ONE: Find Airtable Record

This is how Step One (Find Airtable Record) is delivering my Rollup field that I want to display in the email to the client. 

STEP TWO: Formatter > Utilities > Line Items to Text

Returns each item on its own line

STEP THREE: Formatter > Text > Split

 

So I don’t have the option of choosing ALL ITEMS and I can’t find a setting in the prior step to produce that particular output. 

If I choose “Output Text” (the first element in the list above), all I get in the email is the list of items separated by a comma, which is what I was getting before. Sorry, I realize this is probably super basic stuff. 

 

Thanks

Laura 

​@Laura Pitney 

From your screenshot, the data from Airtable already returns as an array of items.

So give this a try:

Action: Formatter > Utilities > Line Items to Text

You can configure the Formatter step to format the line items how you want/need. (e.g. with surrounding HTML, with static preceding bullet points, etc.)

To clarify, with that approach, you should only need 1 Formatter step.

 

Hi! I ended up doing the Text>Replace function, which worked! Thanks for your help on this. 

 

 

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