How to validate other special character other than ASCII

Question

I am working on one of a Sharepoint list column validation. This column named: Description . The validation requirement is it will only take:

1) This character: Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

2)This special character:

Other than these two, the validation will return FALSE or error.

Right now I using this formula to validate othe extended ASCII symbol and character.

=IF(OR(ISNUMBER(FIND("",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("Ç",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ü",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("é",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("â",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ä",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("à",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("å",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ç",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ê",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ë",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("è",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ï",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("î",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ì",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("æ",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("Æ",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ô",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ö",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ò",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("û",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ù",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ÿ",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("¢",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("£",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("¥",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("ƒ",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("á",Desc1)),ISNUMBER(FIND("í",Desc1))),FALSE,TRUE)

I make few like the formula above and combine with AND function so i can include as much symbol or character possible, so the validation will not allowed the symbol included in the formula to be entered in the list.

But this still expose my validation to endless possibility of other character and symbol that might be entered to the column such as the arabic character, etc, etc.

To include all character in the world in the formula might be impossible.

Need help if any other way or formula could help to resolve this so the column will only accept standard english alphabet and these characters

Answer 1

You can try the below validation formula:

=AND(IF(ISERROR(FIND(“,”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“&”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“!”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“@”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“~”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“#”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“$”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“%”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“^”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“*”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“(“,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“)”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“-“,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“=”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“+”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“:”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“;”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“<“,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“>”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“?”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“‘”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“{“,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“}”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“[“,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“]”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“.”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“/”,Title)),TRUE),IF(ISERROR(FIND(“\”,Title)),TRUE),
IF(ISERROR(FIND(“”””,Title)),TRUE))

Note:

• In the above replace your column with the "Title" column.
• You can add or remove the special characters in the above IF as per your needs.

Source:

https://collab365.community/forum/topics/prevent-special-characters-in-list-item-name/

Answer 2

I don’t think this can be done using column validation.

Basically, we need to accept only English alphabets and specific characters. This is the formula to accept only one character:

NOT(ISERROR(FIND("a",Desc1)))

But it will pass validation as long as the string contains the character “a”.

You may consider using custom code on the list form to include specific characters.

See a post with similar request here: Validate a Single line of text column type of list in sharepoint 2010 to accept only alphabets?