The WhatsApp link tool says my message has 'half an emoji'; how do I fix it?

How an emoji ends up in halves

The browser stores text in small units. An Arabic or English letter takes one unit, but many emoji, such as 👋 and 😀, take two linked units that mean nothing apart. When text is cut at a fixed number of units, as happens in a notification preview or a field with a maximum length, the cut can fall between the two, leaving an orphan unit at the end. On screen it may show as an empty box, a question mark, or nothing at all.

Why the tool refuses it rather than ignoring it

The WhatsApp link generator turns the message into link form with percent-encoding, and that encoding works on whole characters only. An orphan unit is not a whole character, so there is nothing to turn it into. The tool has two choices: drop it silently and change your message without telling you, or stop and say so. It does the second: no link is made, and you see 'The message contains an incomplete character (half an emoji). Delete it and type it again.'

The fix, step by step

1. Put the cursor at the end of the message, since that is where cuts usually happen.
2. Delete one character at a time until the error disappears. One or two is usually enough.
3. Type the emoji you wanted again, straight from the keyboard rather than from the copied text.
4. Check that the link has reappeared in the result, then open it to see the message in the box.

If the cut is not at the end, look for an empty box or an odd symbol in the middle of the text and delete it. If you cannot find it, the quickest route is to clear the message and type it again, or copy it whole from the original source.

A complete emoji is no problem at all

Whole emoji work fine. A message like 'Hi 👋' becomes Hi%20%F0%9F%91%8B in the link, and the emoji shows as normal for the customer. Notice that the one emoji became 12 characters inside the link, twice as many as an Arabic letter, yet the tool's counter treats it as a single character, so the whole message counts as four.