Forum Discussion

lp's avatar
lp
New Contributor II
3 years ago

Maximum characters for Annotation

Does anyone know the max number of characters when entering text into the annotation field?

 

Thanks!

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  • lp's avatar
    lp
    3 years ago

    Thank you! I notice that when the text is entered into a cell in the explore view of a cube view or dashboard, much as it may technically store all of the text, you cannot read the whole text because it cuts off and the column width/row height does not automatically reformat itself so that you can see the whole text and dragging the column to make it bigger in the explore view does not seem to work. The only solution I have come up with is creating an excel book so that you can see the whole text. Is this the best practice or is there a way to actually see all that was written from within explore view? For example, I copy and pasted your response into an annotation cell and it cuts off in explore view before the third sentence ends.

    Thanks!

  • TonyToniTone's avatar
    TonyToniTone
    3 years ago

    In the Cube View format section, there is an Excel Word Wrap option that can be set to True.  Also, are you testing in the Spreadsheet module?  Create a Cube View Connection in Spreadsheet with the Cube View you are testing with.  It should word wrap accordingly.  

  • TonyToniTone's avatar
    TonyToniTone
    Contributor II
    3 years ago

    Annotations are stored in the DataAttachment table in a column called Text.  The Text column has a Data Type of nvarchar(max).  max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^30-1 characters (2 GB). The storage size is two times n bytes + 2 bytes.  Essentially, a book could be written in the Text field for each record with Annotations.  However, that would not be wise to do.  From a performance perspective, there is an impact on database storage, data retrieval, and data rendering in reporting packages.  So even though the Text column allows for it, there should be some general guidelines within an organization on the length of Annotations to preserve on data storage in the database and ensure efficient reporting performance.  

  • lp's avatar
    lp
    New Contributor II
    3 years ago

    Thank you! I notice that when the text is entered into a cell in the explore view of a cube view or dashboard, much as it may technically store all of the text, you cannot read the whole text because it cuts off and the column width/row height does not automatically reformat itself so that you can see the whole text and dragging the column to make it bigger in the explore view does not seem to work. The only solution I have come up with is creating an excel book so that you can see the whole text. Is this the best practice or is there a way to actually see all that was written from within explore view? For example, I copy and pasted your response into an annotation cell and it cuts off in explore view before the third sentence ends.

    Thanks!

  • TonyToniTone's avatar
    TonyToniTone
    Contributor II
    3 years ago

    In the Cube View format section, there is an Excel Word Wrap option that can be set to True.  Also, are you testing in the Spreadsheet module?  Create a Cube View Connection in Spreadsheet with the Cube View you are testing with.  It should word wrap accordingly.  

    • lp's avatar
      lp
      New Contributor II
      3 years ago

      Thanks so much for the response!  I did open the cube view in spreadsheet and I can see all of the text, as you stated. Now I just have to figure out how to get the spreadsheet version of my cube view into my dashboard 😊Thanks!

  • BRujawitz's avatar
    BRujawitz
    New Contributor
    3 years ago

    Not sure if this helps, but for the text Attribute Dimensions, the maximum number of characters is 100.