# Escaping the pipe character in a table (incoming webhook)

**URL:** <https://forum.mattermost.com/t/escaping-the-pipe-character-in-a-table-incoming-webhook/2727>\
**Category:** Troubleshooting\
**Created:** [January 10, 2017, 8:09pm UTC](https://forum.mattermost.com/t/escaping-the-pipe-character-in-a-table-incoming-webhook/2727 "2017-01-10T20:09:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![SeiichiShadd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@SeiichiShadd](https://forum.mattermost.com/u/SeiichiShadd)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 8:09pm UTC](https://forum.mattermost.com/t/escaping-the-pipe-character-in-a-table-incoming-webhook/2727/1 "2017-01-10T20:09:21Z")

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#### Summary

Unable to display the pipe character in a table

#### Steps to reproduce

Have a pipe character as part of some text in a table, and send it in the JSON payload to the incoming webhook. Also tried escaping the pipe character.

#### Expected behavior

Have the pipe character display alongside text in any given cell

#### Observed behavior

A new cell is created and everything is shifted over when a pipe character is present in the text

When attempting to escape the pipe character with ‘’, the escape character is not displayed, and the above behavior is observed.  
Exact payload:  
`{"text" : "Pipe test: |Test1|Test2| |:--|:--| |This text has | in it|Oh boy|"}`

When attempting to escape the escape character (), the following error is observed and nothing is outputted to the channel:  
{“id”:“web.incoming\_webhook.parse.app\_error”,“message”:“Unable to parse incoming data”,“detailed\_error”:"",“request\_id”:“yc39wf6ehtrpffn1wp4nguyqfr”,“status\_code”:500}  
Exact payload:  
`{"text" : "Pipe test:`

```
|Test1|Test2|
|:--|:--|
|This text has \| in it|Oh boy|"}
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lfbrock](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mattermost.com/lfbrock/32/1901_2.png) [@lfbrock](https://forum.mattermost.com/u/lfbrock)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 4:33pm UTC](https://forum.mattermost.com/t/escaping-the-pipe-character-in-a-table-incoming-webhook/2727/2 "2017-01-24T16:33:31Z")

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Hi @SeiichiShadd - thanks for the report, I was able to reproduce this and filed a bug on it here: [https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/PLT-5362](https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/PLT-5362)