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2512206 - Special characters (#, ???), Unicode issues, and file format requirements in IDoc processing

Symptom

You observe unexpected characters in inbound or outbound IDoc processing, for example:

  • "#" characters appearing in IDoc segment fields
  • "???" displayed instead of expected characters
  • National language characters are not transferred correctly
  • Additional characters are inserted into IDoc fields after file upload
  • IDoc fields contain incorrect values after file processing
  • The receiving system rejects the IDoc because it expects EDI_DC40_U
  • IDoc translation or mapping fails in middleware or EDI systems. Examples:
    • Müller → M#ller
    • Łącznik → ##cznik
  • The issue may be observed with:
    • Polish characters
    • German umlauts
    • French accented characters
    • Czech characters
    • Turkish characters
    • Chinese or other non-Latin characters


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Environment

  • SAP Basis ALE
  • SAP NetWeaver
  • SAP Web Application Server for SAP S/4 HANA
  • ABAP PLATFORM - Application Server ABAP

Product

ABAP platform all versions ; SAP NetWeaver all versions ; SAP Web Application Server for SAP S/4HANA all versions

Keywords

#, ???, special characters, Unicode, UTF-8, EDI_DC40, EDI_DC40_U, code page, encoding, national characters, Polish characters, German umlauts, special language characters, WE21, Unicode Format, file port, RFC port, tRFC, RFC Unicode, CRLF, LF, 0D0A, 0A, Windows format, Linux format, WE02, WE05, BD87, middleware, EDI translator, IBM Sterling, character conversion, Unicode file, Unicode IDoc, file encoding, code page conversion, multilingual characters, character replacement, Unicode communication, ALE Unicode, inbound IDoc, outbound IDoc, RFC destination, file transfer, IDoc file, EDI file, special character conversion, Unicode file port, EDI_DC40 versus EDI_DC40_U, line endings, carriage return, line feed, UTF-8 BOM, non-Unicode system, Unicode system, ALE system group, SAP NetWeaver, SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP, BC-MID-ALE, IDoc processing, file format, hexadecimal 0D0A, hexadecimal 0A, middleware conversion, external converter, national language characters, umlaut conversion, character corruption, Unicode flag, Unicode indicator, SAP file port, IDoc translation, EDI mapping, IBM Sterling B2BI.
, KBA , BC-MID-ALE , Integration Technology ALE , Problem

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