Trouble cleaning /n from Gmail "From" field – breaking Merge node

[connor_maxwell]

Hi everyone,
I’m building a workflow where:
Gmail Trigger → Set (Flatten Email) → Merge with Google Sheets → IF (check status) → Google Drive + Update Sheet.
The issue:
In the Set node, when I extract the From field, the value always has \n characters at the end (example: [email protected]\n).
Because of this, the Merge node fails when I try to match the Gmail sender email to the Google Sheets Email column (the values don’t line up).
Here’s what I’ve already tried:
Using .trim(), .replace(/\n/g, “”), .replace(/\s+/g, “”), etc.
Rebuilding the entire workflow from scratch.
Switching between raw Gmail output and simplified mode.
Using payload.headers.find(h => h.name === “From”).value to extract email.
No matter what I try, the /n still shows up in the Set node output (both JSON and Table view).
Questions:
Is this a bug with how Gmail Trigger sends data to n8n?
Is there a reliable way to completely strip \n (newlines) from the Gmail “From” field?
Should I be cleaning this in the Set node, or do I need a Function node instead?
Any advice (or working expression!) would be hugely appreciated, because this /n issue is stopping the Merge node from ever matching emails correctly.
Thanks!

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[mohamed3nan]

Hi @connor_maxwell welcome to the comunity!

Thanks for sharing your workflow, I noticed a couple of things: the Gmail Trigger and Set nodes you’re using are outdated, it’s always best to use the latest versions..

Now, regarding the main issue: you’re parsing the email from the “header” field, but you can actually extract it more directly from "from" > "value" > "address", as shown in the screenshot.

Here’s a simple example: