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🛠 Build🛠 Action StepsHTML to Text

HTML to Text

The HTML to text step takes a string full of markup and gives you back the readable text inside it.

DockData · ConvertTakesHTMLReturnstext

Most often you need it because an email body, a CRM note or a fetched web page arrived as HTML. The next step wants text a person can read: a Slack message, a spreadsheet cell, a summary.

No extra step needed? You can strip HTML directly inside any field token using Data Transformation with {{ 2.html_body | strip_html }}. Use this dedicated HTML to text step when you want the cleaned text stored as a standalone canvas output for multiple subsequent steps to reuse.

Keyboard shortcut: t+h

Setting it up

  1. Press t+h, or open Tools → Data → Convert in the dock and select HTML to text.
  2. In the Input field, pick the HTML from an earlier step.
  3. Save the step.

What it passes on

The converted text is read by step number, like any other step:

{{ 3.ret }}

Run the step once and read the Executions tab to confirm the path before you build against it. That is quicker than reasoning it out, and it settles the question for good.

What it leaves behind

  • Styles and scripts. Markup that is not readable text is stripped along with the tags.
  • Entities and odd markup. Encoded characters are turned back into the characters they stand for, and imperfectly nested tags do not stop the step.
  • Empty input. An empty or missing input produces an empty string.

The exact output for a given page is worth confirming once in the Executions tab rather than predicting it. HTML in the wild varies more than any rule about it does.

Links come through as text only. “Visit this link” survives; the address behind it does not. If you need the URLs, pull them out with a Code editor step before stripping the tags.

Examples to copy

What goes in and what comes out

<h1>Order Confirmation</h1>
<p>Thank you for your order, <strong>Jane</strong>.</p>
<ul>
  <li>Item: Widget Pro</li>
  <li>Quantity: 3</li>
  <li>Total: $89.97</li>
</ul>
<p>
  Visit <a href="https://example.com/track">this link</a> to track your order.
</p>

Out:

Order Confirmation

Thank you for your order, Jane.

- Item: Widget Pro
- Quantity: 3
- Total: $89.97

Visit this link to track your order.

The step preserves the structure (paragraphs become line breaks, list items are prefixed with dashes) while removing all HTML markup.

An email body into Slack

An email trigger gives you the message as HTML. Slack shows the tags rather than the words unless you convert it first.

What to do: add HTML to text after the trigger, set HTML to the email’s body field, and put {{ 3.ret }} in the Slack step’s message — replacing 3 with this step’s own number.

A page you fetched into an AI step

An HTTP Request returns a page as markup, and an AI step reading it spends most of its budget on tags.

What to do: put HTML to text between them, with HTML set to {{ 3.ret.body }}, and reference the converted text in the prompt.

What’s Next?

  • Break the resulting text into a list with Split Text.
  • Write a custom parser for more complex extraction using Code editor.
Parse JSONSplit Text