Notes (Task Field) limitations and workarounds

[J]

Hi,

The task Field (Notes) field in Project seems to allow data entry of any
size, but cut/paste and search operations seem to be limited to the first
255 characters. Is there any method for storing/searching notes in excess of
255 characters?

We're using it to store a list of numbers and I dont want to go and store
them in an OLE document and link to it as it will be a major pain!

Any ideas as we can get something similar to Access's memo field type limit
of 65k characters?

Regards

Jonathan

 

[John]

Hi,

The task Field (Notes) field in Project seems to allow data entry of any
size, but cut/paste and search operations seem to be limited to the first
255 characters. Is there any method for storing/searching notes in excess of
255 characters?

We're using it to store a list of numbers and I dont want to go and store
them in an OLE document and link to it as it will be a major pain!

Any ideas as we can get something similar to Access's memo field type limit
of 65k characters?

Regards

Jonathan

Jonathan,
The Notes field itself will hold a ton of textual information (I don't
know the exact limit but it is several K) - however displaying that
information is another matter. Beyond 256 characters, the only way to
see the full text field is either by using the Task Information/Notes
tab or by exporting the Notes field text to another application (e.g.
Word, Excel, etc.)

Also, if you are storing a list of numbers in the Notes field, I assume
you are separating them with line feeds. Be aware that when the Notes
field is shown as a column in a view, text information will be displayed
only up to the first 256 characters or the first line feed. This is also
true if you attempt a simple copy and paste from Project Notes to
another application.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[J]

Technet seemed to allude to the same, from Project 4/98 onwards... is there
anyway to setup a custom field that could display more than the first 256
characters or be searchable beyond the 256 char limit? Or should I just
resort to attaching/linking an OLE object (like an ascii text file) to the
notes field with the data in. I would rather avoid this as it unneccesarily
complicates finding the information.

Regards

J

 

[John]

Technet seemed to allude to the same, from Project 4/98 onwards... is there
anyway to setup a custom field that could display more than the first 256
characters or be searchable beyond the 256 char limit? Or should I just
resort to attaching/linking an OLE object (like an ascii text file) to the
notes field with the data in. I would rather avoid this as it unneccesarily
complicates finding the information.

Regards

J

Jonathan,
Setting up a custom field would be of no help. The ONLY text based field
in Project that can exceed 256 characters is the Notes field.

You could try the OLE idea but I'm not sure how successful it will be or
how stable.

There is another approach you could use. Go ahead and put the text data
into the Notes field. Then create a search routine using VBA to find and
identify the desired text string(s).

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP