Item Description length?

Question

Is there a limit to the number of characters when entering an item's description? I have a feature layer based on census data and I'm trying to include a 534 row table that describes the attributes from Excel (simple copy/paste) and I can paste it into the description but the save button does nothing after I paste the table into the description. I can only click cancel to get out of edit mode. I also don't get any errors.

We're using Portal v11.1

Chris Underwood · Answer

@SteveCole  Yes, as your screenshot shows, it works with a small part of your Table. If you open the Developer tools (F12) you can see it is using a Request Method GET when it works correctly. It fails when there is enough data in the Description to force it to use a Request Method POST instead. As a guess, it is unexpected that there is so much information there, that it needs to use a POST method.

I suggest you open a support case with your Esri distributor, to decide if this is a Bug, or an Enhancement, or a limit to be documented.

Meanwhile, perhaps hosting your spreadsheet table as a Content item, might provide some workaround options for you.

evtguy · Answer

Well, I'd prefer that the end result still looked like a formatted table because it's easier to read. Like this:

Chris Underwood · Answer

Hello @SteveCole , that Description Saved correctly for me. I did copy your data into Notepad++ in order to get a character count (23,136), and copied from there into the Description, rather than from the Community site itself. Perhaps that stripped away some data size or complexity that the Description could not cope with ?