diff --git a/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.test.ts b/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.test.ts
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..f4d388acdb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.test.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+import { formatString } from './helpers';
+
+describe('JSONFormatter helpers', () => {
+  describe('escapeString', () => {
+    it("does not escape strings that don't contain quotes", () => {
+      const input = 'hello world';
+      const expected = 'hello world';
+
+      const result = formatString(input);
+      expect(result).toEqual(expected);
+    });
+
+    it('does not escape strings that contain single quotes', () => {
+      const input = `'hello world'`;
+      const expected = `'hello world'`;
+
+      const result = formatString(input);
+      expect(result).toEqual(expected);
+    });
+
+    it('does escapes strings that contain one double quote', () => {
+      const input = `"hello world`;
+      const expected = `\\"hello world`;
+
+      const result = formatString(input);
+      expect(result).toEqual(expected);
+    });
+
+    it('does escapes strings that contain two double quotes', () => {
+      const input = `"hello world"`;
+      const expected = `\\"hello world\\"`;
+
+      const result = formatString(input);
+      expect(result).toEqual(expected);
+    });
+
+    it('does escapes a string that looks like JSON', () => {
+      const input = `{"hello": "world"}`;
+      const expected = `{\\"hello\\": \\"world\\"}`;
+
+      const result = formatString(input);
+      expect(result).toEqual(expected);
+    });
+  });
+});
diff --git a/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.ts b/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.ts
index 64f40ddcfb1..72c410a1feb 100644
--- a/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.ts
+++ b/packages/grafana-ui/src/components/JSONFormatter/json_explorer/helpers.ts
@@ -4,8 +4,8 @@
 /*
  * Escapes `"` characters from string
  */
-function escapeString(str: string): string {
-  return str.replace('"', '"');
+export function formatString(str: string): string {
+  return str.replace(/\\/g, '\\\\').replace(/"/g, '\\"');
 }
 
 /*
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ export function getValuePreview(object: object, value: string): string {
   }
 
   if (type === 'string') {
-    value = '"' + escapeString(value) + '"';
+    value = '"' + formatString(value) + '"';
   }
   if (type === 'function') {
     // Remove content of the function