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Contacts - Allow macrons for languages (such as te reo)

We use another software programme which exports all our customer details and invoices etc into Xero automatically. The other programme uses Google to create addresses. A lot of the addresses include te reo, so include macrons. When the text is imported into Xero the macrons cause non-recognition of the characters, so we end up with a mess.
Surely in this modern world, Xero, an Aotearoa, New Zealand, developed programme, can be made to recognise our indigenous (Official) language, and allow correct te reo spellings.
This is 2022 not 1922, please allow us to get this basic NZ requirement correct. Xero is dragging its heels and appears, in my opinion, to be a white-lead organisation which does not care.

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Karin K shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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under review  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded  · 

Hi Karin, would it be possible to get a few more examples of names that you've tried to import and not have show with macrons? 

One of our team have tested creating a contact via import with the name Whakatāne (/mækrn, me-/) and this created a contact in Xero as shown in this image. 

It'd be great to better understand and see if we can look into this a bit more. 

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  • Elisabeth Nielson commented  ·   ·  Report

    How is it in the year 2025 there is still not support for tohutō when creating invoices? As a business not only operating but actually founded in Aotearoa NZ, I would just expect that our official languages are supported.

    What's worse is that I'm bilingual in French, so I figured I'd just quickly test whether other accents work.

    I'm gobsmacked. Please fix this. Toitū te reo!

  • Sonya Maniapoto commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'm very dissappointed to see this has not been resolved and it is now April 2025. Another example of defective invoice PDF attached. Note that the PDF preview displays the text differently again.
    Actual text in invoice:
    "Sample row to show how macrons display.
    a with macron : ā Ā
    e with macron : ē Ē
    i with macron : ī Ī
    o with macron : ō Ō
    u with macron : ū Ū"

  • Ken Leech commented  ·   ·  Report

    We integrate with WebsiteBuilder and when the name of the organisation comes across with a macron, it get's translated as shown in the example attached.

    This should be shown as Gate Pā Primary School School. If I fix it then I land up with two customers, one with the macron and one with the HTML version.

  • Craig Innes commented  ·   ·  Report

    Currently if there is a macron over a letter it displays the macroned letter correctly in the Xero Contact name as it is a NZ Maori orgainisation. But when a payment is made to this contact the MT9 eft file not only does not display it completely removes the letter that had the macron over it. eg ābc organisation becomes bc organisation. This is not great to not be able to correctly display an indigenous organisation corrct name let alone for audit trail reasons. Can this please be urgently looked at and rectified.

  • Alexandra Corbett commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is really important as exporting the Contact with a macron not only loses the macron, but also the letter associated with it.
    This creates an audit trail issue as the contact name is effectively wrong. Our old Sage accounting system was able to manage macrons. We look forward to this being resolved timely as Te Reo is an officials NZ language. Thanks

  • Duncan Matthews commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is presenting challenges for our audit trail and those tasked with approving payments. When we export a batch payment, Xero replaces macrons in a contact's name with a space. Even our legacy SAGE software from 2010, that is an overseas product, handled this more gracefully by replacing the macron character with its non-macron equivalent (e.g. ā with a).

  • Rob Riddell Tigeir commented  ·   ·  Report

    A year on from this first being reported and we're still being denied the ability to use people's correct names without considerable effort. Do we need publicity to get this resolved?

  • Vincent Ardern commented  ·   ·  Report

    PDF export of bills we've received also have this issue. The PDF is missing characters left right and centre where they have macrons.

  • Nic Hart commented  ·   ·  Report

    Kia ora, while I've been able to use macrons in Xero, there have been a couple of places where it's missing. Today's example was for an employee who has a macron in their name. I was unable to enter their name in the employee section of payroll because it wouldn't recognise special characters.

    It is critically important for us to be able to spell our employees names correctly, in the official language of our country that is desperately trying to be revitalised and reclaimed. Thanks in advance for your support of this request.