I want to show long text descriptions in pop ups from a point shapefile. In arcgis desktop I can't edit the shape in order to store text more than aproximately 250 characters. Is there any way to do this? Thanks
Text fields in shapefiles have a maximum length of 254 characters so if you save a geodatabase feature class with text fields longer than that to a shapefile, those fields will be truncated down to 254 characters.
The workaround to save your point layer's attribute table as a text file in ArcGIS Desktop using the Export Table command in the table window's menu. This creates a comma separated (CSV file) which you can then import into your ArcGIS Online web map as a layer. Text fields are automatically quoted in the resulting text file, so it is OK if your text descriptions contain commas. Before you do the export, you'll need to add the X Y coordinates of your point locations into the attribute table using the Calculate Geometry command (create two new empty numeric fields then right-click each of them in the table window to get to that command) so ArcGIS Online knows how to georeference the data. The exception is that if your point features already contain street address attributes, you can import the file without adding the XY coordinates, because the ArcGIS Explorer Online client supports geocoding.
The method above only applies to point features, because importing CSV files into ArcGIS Online web maps only supports points. If you have lines or polygons with long descriptions, the workaround is to use shapefiles and break the long descriptions up over multiple text fields.
Actually that's what I've been doing for my point features with long descriptions too. I've added multiple text fields, each of length 254, into my shapefile to contain different sections of the long description. In the popup configuration, you can use the Custom formatting and simply truncate these fields together with a space between each one. See the point features in my map of San Diego for what I mean. Click one of the point features then choose Edit Popup: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=1966ef409a344d089b001df85332608f This gives me a lot of flexibility in how I configure the popup. For example, in the San Diego map I put the first sentence of the description, which I store in one field, at the top of the popup in bold as a quick summary before the address. This method also allows me to easily reconfigure the popup to contain less descriptive text if I want to, without having to edit the source data. Another advantage of splitting long descriptions up into multiple text fields of 254 characters each is that using ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 (to be released next year) if someone opens your web map in ArcMap, the feature classes that ArcMap automatically generates from your web map's point layers will match this field structure. So if an ArcMap user opens your web map, they can get the data from your point layer, use it in geoprocessing or make modifications or additions, save it as a shapefile and then import it into their own web map without any of the descriptive data getting truncated.
