Remove unwanted characters from String in Power Automate or Logic Apps Tutorial

What if I told you that you can remove unwanted characters from a string using 1 action? Whether it be unwanted symbols, letters or numbers or a combination of all, I will show you a very easy repeatable and efficient method of removing these characters from a string. This is really useful for extracting a number from a string, by keeping only the numbers or for removing symbols to ensure that a filename or folder path is compatible with SharePoint.

You will learn how to use Select action, Chunk, Contains, If and Join expressions and can use this to make your automation super efficient in both Power Automate or Logic Apps.

00:00 Intro
00:25 Build a flow to identify character matches
01:40 Create an array with Chunk
02:27 Using contains to identify if a character exists
04:23 Remove unwanted characters
05:14 Return the new string with Join
06:28 Keep numbers only
08:20 Summary of flow build

[Jonny]

Thank you! I just used this to filter out special characters in an email subject line and used the output to title the file in SharePoint

[KyleDeacon-nt]

Exactly what I needed. Brilliant walkthrough

[FernandoSuarezOrnani-kf]

Very useful, thanks.
You can also use this to replace character that are not file system friendly with a single character, just to remind you that something was there. For example replace *?":<>/\| with an underscore _.
Simply replace the '' in the If inside the select with the character: if(contains(outputs('test'), item()), '_', item())

[yllqlhl]

Thank you! Going to try this to remove the word "EXTERNAL" from the start of a string. Thank you!

[mounikakoppadi]

Wow, this video is incredibly useful and informative!

[MarshallBero]

Hi, great video! I'm having trouble with comparing two arrays and failing to match items that include the & character (using the 'contains' function).

[jerometurmel]

Congratulations on your excellent work. I've observed your frequent use of the new editor and was wondering if you've encountered any challenges with it. In my experience, I've noticed expressions randomly disappearing within the Outlook connector, which raises concerns about its reliability for professional use. What are your insights on this matter?

[kylerayner]

Great video. I have this same thing in a flow. What if you wanted to replace specific text instead of a blank. For instance, double quote symbol " gets replaced with the text double quotes. Is there a way to map the symbols to what you want to replace with?

[kaishalam]

When I run the same action on my flow it gives the json format and it is not giving output as array
[
{
"False": ""
},
{
"False": ""
},
{
"False": ""
},
{
"True": ""
}
]

[Andyr]

Another great example, perfectly explained. After stumbling upon your channel I have learned so much!

I have another related use case with accented characters or needing to select based upon ASCII range of permitted characters. Would it be as simple as entering all the accented characters? What if I wanted to do more of a replace so the output still made sense, just that accented letters are replaced by a non-accented equivalent letter?

[paulblum]

I have been unable to get the string that we started with back into an array! MS Forms automatically put in string forms with odd characters like '/' separating commas. Tried to get rid of the /, but it just showed back up in the final product and seems to have stayed a string when I would like for it to become an array of separate strings.

[zahsam]

Hey Damien, Thanks for the amazing video (as usual 😊)

I have a use case where I need to extract the ID from an email subject which is always going to be in the following format:
where x is an integer. any thoughts?

[jlchen]

Thanks for many good video's. I tried to use chatgpt analysis the content/body of an email when it arrives. I am struggling with the issue that the body of the email contains not only the new message replied by the sender, but also old email conversation. could you please advice or make a video on how one can just capture the current email message body?

[inspectorlife]

Good stuff!! Is there a way to use Power Automate to run Power Quary in the evening? Is that a simple automate? 😊

[andrewjameson]

I could have done with that yesterday to get 1000 out of $1000 - Silver Level to then use the 1000 as an integer.