topic Re: Maximum text length in Developer

Maximum text length

vincent_1234 — Thu, 19 May 2016 09:19:17 GMT

Dear developers,

I've imported data from a plain sql server table. One column contains many characters, however according the documentation this should not be an issue.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-desktop-data-types/#text-type

However when reading data, I am limited to 32766 characters, which is an issue for me. How could this be and how could I overcome this?

With kind regards

Re: Maximum text length

Greg_Deckler — Thu, 19 May 2016 11:51:46 GMT

I wonder if this is a limitation of Power Query "M" versus the Desktop data model types. In other words, the data model Text type can theoretically support large amounts of text but the import process using Power Query is truncating it to 32,766 characters.

Re: Maximum text length

vincent_1234 — Fri, 20 May 2016 09:35:24 GMT

I tried importing in Excel and it's the same, text is cut off.

However the Excel limitations are clear about this https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-specifications-and-limits-16c69c74-3d6a-4aaf-ba35-e6eb276e8eaa

Could this be the same for PowerBI?

Power Query has the same specs as Power BI, with much larger "Maximum size of text in a preview cell", however this being an Excel plugin, how do they come up with that. The results are still limited to 32767 chars

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Power-Query-specifications-and-limits-5fb2807c-1b16-4257-aa5b-6793f051a9f4

Re: Maximum text length

Greg_Deckler — Fri, 20 May 2016 12:12:47 GMT

Hmm, I would post this as an issue and supply the references you cite and ask "What gives?".

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/360879-issues

All the references you cite indicate that you should be able to have more than 32,767 characters in a text cell so that says there is a bug or issue somewhere. Would be interested to hear if you get any feedback on it.

Re: Maximum text length

vincent_1234 — Tue, 24 May 2016 06:36:53 GMT

No answers yet, but it seems to be a kind of API limit.

The text in the cell is the actual size, however the data I receive in the custom visual is limited

Re: Maximum text length

vross — Wed, 16 May 2018 22:09:31 GMT

Interesting, I'd be happy with 32k. My text is being limited to only 1024. Same whether I pull the data from a linked Excel sheet or through a .csv file. Wanted to use power query to join two relatively short tables with text values and it's been a complete fiasco, since I handed the finished product off only to find out that the text columns were truncated.

What I've tried.

both Excel and csv

setting the type to Any and Text, neither of which made any difference.

Re: Maximum text length

vross — Wed, 16 May 2018 22:16:43 GMT

Ok, this is difficult to debug, since the preview in the query editor only shows the first 1024 characters, but the issue may be limited to data from linked Excel tables. So to duplicate, dump >1024 characters in a cell, create a table, "Add to Data Model", then "Close & Load Too..." back into a new sheet.

Re: Maximum text length

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 20:38:45 GMT

hi @vincent_1234

did you ever solve this issue?

thanks

Re: Maximum text length

Anonymous — Sun, 23 May 2021 21:13:00 GMT

Hi @Greg_Deckler ,

I think I am experiencing the scenario that you have just described. Power Query appears to truncate to 32K characters.

Is there a solution for this?

Thanks