Salesforce Reports — Bucket Field Removed When Formula Field Contains Special Characters

In Salesforce Reports, a bucket field may be automatically removed when a formula field containing special characters — such as a forward slash ( / ) or backslash ( \ ) — is used as the bucket source. This is a known limitation in the Salesforce Reports bucketing feature. This article explains when this behavior occurs and provides a workaround.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a formula field named "Industry - Sector" on the Opportunity object using the formula: TEXT(Account.Industry) + '/' + ' ' + TEXT(Account.Sector__c)
2. Create a report on Opportunity using the custom report type "Opportunities with Products."
3. Create a bucket field on the "Industry - Sector" formula field and add values to the bucket.
4. Set remaining values to "Others" and name the bucket column (for example, "XYZ").
5. Group the report by the bucket field and toggle off detail rows.
6. Run the report.
7. Hard-refresh the report and click Edit.
8. Click on the bucket field to open it.
9. Observe that one value is missing from the bucket on the right-hand side, though the count still shows the original number.
10. Hard-refresh the report again. The bucket field is now removed entirely.