Document libraries and multiple lines of text column

Within SharePoint, document libraries offer a vast array of possibilities to work on and with documents. There are some limitations, one of which is the use of the multiple lines of text column.

This issue has been discussed for articles by Bart. Now, the same issue is also valid when you want to work with Word-documents. Let's take an example;

• you've got a very nice document template in which users are allowed to enter a title and a description
• in reality the description part of the template is a SharePoint column which has been added into the template using the quick parts
• users like to type long descriptions (ok, not all of them are like that... but nevertheless), so they could easily pass the 255 character limit of the description field
• Word will allow you to keep on typing, it's only when you try to save the document to SharePoint that you get the message that long texts aren't accepted.

Luckily, there is a way to work around this !
As stated in the blog of Bart, you can create a column of the type Multiple lines of text, and make sure that you select the option "Allow unlimited length in document libraries". The moment that you activate this option, you'll get a warning that using the option could result in data loss... never mind this for the time being.

Next step is to use the field as quick part in a template and to test it out by typing a very long text. Depending on your Word-version, you'll get one of following results:

• everything works like a charm => you're probably using Word 2010, don't you
• when trying to save, you get either an error message, or in the document information panel you get a dotted line around the multiple lines of text field => this means that you are using an older version of Word

By using this option, the character limit of 255 doesn't count anymore, and you can enter whatever number of characters you want. I've tested it up to 62.000 characters (spaces included).