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.
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_ |
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