Question
How can I use a special character in Custom Field data?
Answer
Special characters can be imported into Contact's Custom Data text and large text fields by using the HTML encoded version of the character. For example, for a registered trademark symbol ®, use the following: ® When Contacts are exported or a Contact record is viewed in the UI, the character will not be displayed. However, when a Campaign is deployed and that Custom Field is incorporated in the HTML version of the Template used, the encoded text will be decoded to display the symbol.
Alternately, use the Unicode Text custom field and import the data using UTF-8 encoding.
This is not necessary in releases since v8.3, but the HTML encoded characters will still be converted when inserted into templates.
Encoding for Text and Large Text fields only works for HTML content. If used in the Plain Text version of an email, the character will not be converted and the encoded ® will be displayed instead.