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HTML Entity Decode

Turn HTML entities like &, é and — back into normal readable characters.

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Turn HTML entities like &, é and — back into normal readable characters.

About HTML Entity Decode

Turn HTML entities back into the characters they stand for, so & becomes &, é becomes é and — becomes an em dash. Decimal (é) and hexadecimal (é) numeric entities are fully supported, along with the common named entities for punctuation, symbols, accented letters and Greek letters.

When it helps

  • Cleaning up text exported from a CMS or database that is full of & and ".
  • Reading RSS feed content or API responses that come with escaped HTML.
  • Fixing double-encoded text like & by decoding it twice.
  • Getting readable text from scraped page source.

Tips

  • If the output still contains entities like é, the text was encoded twice. Run it through again.
  • Named entities need their closing semicolon, except for a few classic ones such as &amp, &lt, &gt, &quot, &nbsp, &copy and &reg, which browsers also accept without it.
  • Named entities that are not recognised are left unchanged rather than guessed, so you can spot them. Numeric entities always work.

Good to know

Quick answers about html entity decode in your browser.

The text was HTML-encoded, often by a CMS, export or API, and then shown somewhere that displays it literally instead of rendering it. Decoding converts it back to the actual characters.

Both produce é. é refers to the character by its Unicode code point in decimal, é is the same in hexadecimal, and é is a named shortcut. Not every character has a name, but every character has a numeric code.

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark and no limit on how many files you process.

No. Files are read and processed locally in your browser, so they never leave your device.

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Part of the Text Tools collection.