InfoPath Dev

I had a infopath document library with already filled forms. I have updated the template this year and now its only showing the data upto 255 character in the text boxes where the original data in same boxes is more than that. I have changed the field to rich text and updated and relink the template but no luck so far.

Can anyone please help me to recover the original data or fix the template which will show all data rather then only 255 characters. Any help will be much appreciated.

Are you saying that only 255 characters are showing inside the fields in the form, or are you talking about the data in the fields showing in the form library?

If you changed those fields in the form from what they originally were, then that data may have been cut off.  Does your form library have versioning turned on so that you can retrieve the old XML?

Thank you very much for your reply. much appreciated for that.

Yes only 255 characters are showing inside the fields. There was no version set up on list previously. So I can't find any previous version. I have tried some previous and new templates but no luck so far. It's giving the same result. Even I changed the same fields to rich text. Moreover if I open the xml file in notepad then it shows all the data.

Any idea how to fix this?

Oh, the XML does have all the data still?  That's great and means you don't need versioning in this case on the XML forms.  Why aren't you able to just go back to the original version of the form template before you started making changes?  Are you also not versioning the form template changes?  This is a critical thing to do so that you can always revert back to a previous template - this must always be done.  If you don't have the previous version that worked, then do you know what was in the previous version that showed all the data?  You said that you've switched back to rich text controls, but it's still not showing the all the data?

Thanks for your reply once again. I have the template versioning and I have reinstated the original template which make the forms and data to work but it's showing data upto 255 characters only. Moreover this is only for those text boxes where the data type was text where all the rich text boxes data display is fine. I have updated the same template while making the text boxes to rich text box but still no luck.

Any help will he appreciated.

what version of InfoPath and SharePoint are you using?

infopath 2007 with Moss 2007 and sharepoint services 3.0

any tip?

SharePoint view columns are limited to the SQL schema that SharePoint uses behind the scenes. I should remember what the limits are but it's been 7 years since my dev team at Microsoft designed them... Anyway, my guess is that for text controls, SharePoint limits the column width to 255 chars but that it's bigger for rich text. I know that wasn't what you wanted to hear.

Several ways to work around this:

1. Add a rich text control to your schema and change the text control in your schema to bind to that instead. Then, promote that to SharePoint instead of the current one.
• Pros: easy to do
• Cons: old data needs to be migrated and SharePoint has limit on number of rich text fields that can be promoted
2. Save your data to a SQL database and use data views
• Pros: data views unleash a lot of flexibility. You can customize them using SharePoint Designer.
• Cons: you need to get your data in a real database (not SharePoint). Qdabra provides a free trial of a Web Service that will do this very quickly and no changes to your form are needed.
3. Map your data to a SharePoint list instead of Form Library and use Qdabra's client-side qRules to promote XML values to it on Submit
• Pros: no SQL or Web Service required,
• Cons: ShP lists may have their own limitations and you need to check those first by just creating a list and typing in a long text string. If they work, you will still need to inject qRules into your form and set up the mapping. qRules is $199 and it will take an hour to configure the mapping.

There may be another solution, but these are the three workarounds I can think of for now.

Good luck!