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I am using SharePoint List to capture values from the form. How many characters does multiple lines text field supports in sharepoint custom list?
It asks me how many lines, while creating the column. How many character a line can accomodate?
I am using SP 2007.
Thank you
The multiple lines text field is a ntext SQL type so it can store up to 2 Gb of text.
The characters a line depends how the input or textarea is rendered on your html (how many columns, what size of text, what font-family you use...) or how the user has it configured to render on their screen... so short answer is: "there is no specific length of characters in a line".
if I'm not wrong a multi line text field is a 'Note' type, this field mapped to a ntext sql type in DB. In this SQL type you can store
Variable-length Unicode data with a maximum length of 2^30 - 1 (1,073,741,823) characters. Storage size, in bytes, is two times the number of characters entered. The ISO synonym for ntext is national text.
Practically it can accomadate a very lengthy value which will be sufficient for normal requirements.
A multi line text field is Defined in sharepoint as a 'Note' type, this is stored in the the DB as a ntext sql type.
In the SQL type can store 2gb of char data, that's 1,073,741,823 characters.
Obviously there are practical limits on how big this data should be allowed to get - as SP is a web based system, you do not want to be passing 2gb back and forth all the time.
You can't set it, but you could use a workflow to check the size of the data in the fields and ether truncate or warn about the size of the field.
Since sharepoint is totally based on SQL the limitation of SQL columns maximum length will be the sharepoint column maximum limit.
If you come to sharepoint context, it is number of columns that is based for limitation ,a list can accomodate rather than individual column max limit.
