Hi everyone,

I believe ManyChat recently changed the way it sends custom fields to WhatsApp templates, and it’s causing issues with line breaks.

Previously, we had automations that generated lists via a script, populating a custom field with this format:

Item 1\nItem 2\nItem 3

This worked perfectly, and the WhatsApp message displayed like this:

Item 1 Item 2 Item 3

For messages sent within 24 hours (non-templates), we’ve found that using regular line breaks (hitting “return”) works fine. However, the syntax for templates (using \n for line breaks) stopped working recently—within the last few days.

Importantly, we didn’t change anything on our end, and it was working just fine before.

Here’s what support shared when I flagged this issue:

The messages are generating this error:

"status_code": 400, "response": "{\"error\":{\"message\":\"(#100) Invalid parameter\",\"type\":\"OAuthException\",\"code\":100,\"error_data\":{\"messaging_product\":\"whatsapp\",\"details\":\"Param text cannot have new-line\\/tab characters or more than 4 consecutive spaces\"}}"

What’s especially frustrating about this:
a) There’s no way to know this error happened. It doesn’t log or flag the issue—the message just doesn’t go out.
b) There don’t seem to be any workarounds to create the same layout (line breaks) with other syntax (like <br>, etc.).

Has anyone else noticed this issue or found a workaround? I’d really appreciate any insights.

Thank you!

Diego