Expanded Text Ad Builder Illegal Characters error

[AussieWeb Conversion]

Hi

I'm trying to use the Expanded Text Ad Builder, but have hit this error
There are illegal characters in the string.

What I'm doing is copying the existing text ads and concatenating description 1 and description 2 into
the description field, whilst reusing the headline and adding a headline 2 based on the company name.

As far as I can tell, it is only the ads that have an exclamation point that are causing this error as 121
ads were successfully built and only 10 resulted in the error.
This is perfectly allowed if I then go and replicate this process via the UI.

The error message unfortunately, does not detail which field - headline1, description, path1 etc has
the illegal character.

Can you please look into this?

Regards
Nigel

[AussieWeb Conversion]

Further info since I've just run it over a 2nd account.  86 times I got that error about illegal characters.
This time it appears that ads which have an ampersand character also trigger the error.

I've also found an example where there are neither ampersand nor exclamation point characters.
I'm at a complete loss now as to what's causing this error.

[AussieWeb Conversion]

Eureka!
I've found the problem.  Not illegal characters per se, but rather too many characters.
I guess the extra ones are illegal.  :-P

As it's not a particularly helpful error message, and gives no indication as to which field had
too many characters, any chance this error message can be made more useful please?

[Tyler Sidell (AdWords Scripts Team)]

Hi Nigel,

Glad that you were able to resolve the issue.  We'll bring this up with the rest of the team to see what improvements can be made.

Thanks,

Tyler Sidell

AdWords Scripts Team

[Johnson Cherian]

Hi Tyler,

I got the same error and i am stuck with my ad,

There are illegal characters in the string

It seems Final URL: http://www.octopix.net http:"//" cause the error, but we can't save without it, it will come automatically when we save.

Pls give me any solution for this, pls see the attached screenshot.

Thanks
johnson

[Sven Reinhardt]

Hi Johnson,

try removing the dot from path 1 - "www.yoururl.net/portfolio" should do...

[Tyler Sidell (AdWords Scripts Team)]

Thanks Sven for that solution.

@Johnson, I wasn't able to reproduce on our end but you should be able to remove the HTTP as it will add it automatically.  Let us know if you have any further questions.  In the future please, open a new thread for us to better track the issue.

Regards, 
Tyler Sidell

AdWords Scripts Team

[James]

I can confirm that the error is caused by the Path url having a "." in it. So "mypage.html" will cause the error, "mypage" will not. This does not occur with the Final URL so is ok to have the the full filename there such as "http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html".

When creating the ad originally it didn't highlight which field had the problem, however when I went back in to edit the ad it did highlight the Path box (though it still didn't tell me what character was illegal).

James

[Tyler Sidell (AdWords Scripts Team)]

Hi James,

Thanks for the confirmation.  Please reach out to us if you have any additional questions.  

Regards,

Tyler Sidell

AdWords Scripts Team