For formulas, how does Power BI interpret a Slash in a character string - entered versus pasted?

[JDBOS]

As I built this question, I seemed to have found a bit of an answer but would appreciate your coaching re why this works...

In constructing an "If" statement, I copied and pasted the logical test's condition string "ASD/AS/NVLD..." and PBI responded with the following syntax error msg, and pop-up when I hovered over the "...ASD..." portion of the string:

Exploring a bit further, hovering over the  ".../NVLD..." characters, the system popped up with:

then, erasing the "NVLD" and entering "...AS" results in an attempt to help with a formula...

But, after pondering all of this, I re-entered the formula (rather than cut and paste) and it worked fine >> WHY?? 😉

[amitchandak · Accepted solution]

@JDBOS , Have copied it from a text editor? Because I tried /end/ and D/AS/N and it worked for me.

In case you took from some editor which taken /N as enter or some other formatting there. I might have carried that to power bi, hence the error

[v-zhenbw-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @JDBOS ,

We restore your issue, 

It is worth noting that this error occurs only when we use the wrong double quotes.

So please use the straight double quotes, the text in the straight double quotes will be red and it will work fine.

If you have any question, please kindly ask here and we will try to resolve it.

Best regards,

Community Support Team _ zhenbw

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[JDBOS]

So, the "curly quotes" vs "straight quotes" are creating the errors!  

And @amitchandak was right that it was the editor passing in the "curly quotes"

Also found this good article about "smart quotes" - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/smart-quotes-in-word-702fc92e-b723-4e3d-b2cc-71dedaf2f343

Thanks for your help!!

[amitchandak · Accepted solution]

@JDBOS , Have copied it from a text editor? Because I tried /end/ and D/AS/N and it worked for me.

In case you took from some editor which taken /N as enter or some other formatting there. I might have carried that to power bi, hence the error

[JDBOS]

@amitchandak I'll do some experimenting - these autism diagnosis combinations were drawn from several sources and pasted into an email, then copied into an Excel spreadsheet so plenty of places for special characters to have been picked up...