Rich text box having { } getting converted into its ANSI value

Question

I have a list in which one column is of type Rich text box. I am using a console application which reads this list's item and replace a substring for example RichTextColumn contains value [subtext] then

string mytext=item["RichTextColumn"].toString();
mytext=mytext.Replace("[subtext]","******");

The above code work fine , but when Rich Text column has { or } then the code fails for example if RichTextColumn contains value {subtext} then below can't find it

mytext=mytext.Replace("{subtext}","--------");

On debugging I found mytext contains ANSI code for curly braces(&#123) instead of {

Please help me out me to resolve this issue.

Answer 1

SharePoint stores some of the Rich Text characters in ANSI format

You can decode the string before applying the Replace function as below

mytext = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(mytext);
mytext=mytext.Replace("{subtext}","--------");