Tools
HTML entity decode
Decode HTML entities
Turn HTML entities such as & or é back into normal characters.
About this tool
Sometimes you copy text from page source, a WordPress export, an RSS feed or a database and it comes out littered with &, ", é or ’. Decoding the entities gives you clean text to reuse in a document, a spreadsheet or another CMS without fixing every symbol by hand.
Paste the text into “HTML with entities to decode” and the result appears straight away under “Decoded text”. Every HTML5 named entity is recognised ( , €, … and the rest), along with decimal numeric entities such as é and hexadecimal ones such as é. Any tags in the text are left untouched; only the entities change. “Switch to encode” does the opposite.
Everything is processed in your browser. Entities are interpreted by the browser’s own HTML parser, one entity at a time, in an inert document: no scripts run and no images load even if the text contains them. If an & doesn’t form a recognisable entity, as in “AT&T”, it is left as it is.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my text show & instead of &?
It has been encoded twice: first & became &, then that & was encoded again. Decode, copy the result and decode again until it disappears.
What is and what does it become?
It is a non-breaking space, which stops two words being split across lines. Decoding turns it into that character (U+00A0), which looks like a normal space but isn’t one to many programs.
What is ’?
It is the typographic apostrophe ’ written as a decimal numeric entity. CMSs such as WordPress often produce it when they turn straight quotes into curly ones.
Is it safe to paste HTML containing scripts?
Yes. The text is never inserted into the page as HTML: entities are decoded one by one and the result is shown as plain text in a read-only box.