How to Encode SharePoint Column Display Names to Internal names

When you create a field in a SharePoint list it creates two things:

• An Internal name
• A display name, for use in views forms etc.

It is simple to change the display name, but the internal name can never be changed. Sometimes, when you create a column, if the column name contains certain characters, it will be encoded. For example, Paulie’s Test List would become Paulie_x0027_s_x0020_Test_x0020_List.

For this reason I always like to create my field names using camelCase such as pauliesTestList and then modify the display name afterwards. But if you’re working with SharePoint, you are going to come across field names like this on a regular basis.

For much more information on internal column names, check out this useful post written by Tom Riha.

SharePoint Column Name Converter

To make it super easy for you, simply type the name of your SharePoint column here and the correct escaped name will be generated for you in the box below.

SharePoint Column Display Name:

SharePoint Column Internal Name:

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List of SharePoint Character Mappings

Below is a complete list of characters that are escaped in SharePoint Column names. I hope you find it useful.

Character	Description	Hex Code	Internal SharePoint Code
	Space	20	_x0020_
~	Equivalency sign – tilde	7E	_x007e_
!	Exclamation mark	!	_x0021_
@	At symbol	40	_x0040_
#	Number	23	_x0023_
$	Dollar	24	_x0024_
%	Per cent sign	25	_x0025_
^	Caret – circumflex	5E	_x005E_
&	Ampersand	26	_x0026_
*	Asterisk	2A	_x002a_
(	Open parenthesis (or open bracket)	28	_x0028_
)	Close parenthesis (or close bracket)	29	_x0029_
+	Plus	2B	_x002B_
–	Minus or Hyphen	2D	_x002D_
=	Equals	3D	_x003D_
{	Opening brace	7B	_x007B_
}	Closing brace	7D	_x007D_
:	Colon	3A	_x003A_
“	Double quotes (or speech marks)	22	_x0022_
|	Vertical bar or Pipe	7C	_x007C_
;	Semi Coloin	3A	_x003A_
‘	Single Quote	27	_x0027_
\	Backslash	5C	_x005C_
<	Less than (or open angled bracket)	3C	_x003C_
>	Greater than (or close angled bracket)	3E	_x003E_
?	Question mark	3F	_x003F_
,	Comma	2C	_x002C_
.	Period, dot or full stop	2E	_x002E_
/	Slash or divide	2F	_x002F_
`	Grave accent or back tick	60	_x0060_