Field length update does not work

[BertKraan1]

ArcGIS Pro 2.8.1

I have a feature class in which I expanded a text field of lenght 100 to 255 using:

data - fields - click 'lenght' field and overwrite '100'  with '255', click save.

seems ok:

however as soon as the string gets longer than 100 chars I get an error:

Saving, exiting and restarting Pro does not help. What do I miss here?

Regards,

Bert

[JayantaPoddar · Accepted solution]

According to Modifying Field Properties , If your table or feature class does not contain data, you can increase or decrease the value of Field Length.

In case you have data (rows) in the table, you add a new Field (Field Length=255). Use Field Calculator (if you need to get the values of old field to new field). Delete the old field.

[BertKraan1]

a new field works for me, thank you for your fast response and the link to the docs

Although I find it a bit odd that I can seemingly alter the length without error and receive a mysterious error later on, (sometimes much later)

I would prefer a "you can't alter field lenght because it contains data" at the moment of the attempt.

But hey, if it was easy everybody would be doing it 🙂 

Thanks!