Data truncated to 255 characters when copying TFS-Excel form

Data truncated to 255 characters when copying TFS-Excel form

• Drewid

  Thank you very much for your reply.

  This may very well be the root cause of all the evils of this problem

  As I said somewhere one method that appears to work, if I:

  • edit the contents of the source cell (F2),
  • select all (End, Shift+Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+C),
  • then go to the TFS-Excel sheet,
  • edit the contents of the destination cell (F2)
  • and paste the actual text in (Ctrl+V),

  This method appears to bypass where-ever the problem lies.

  Therefore, the only real solutions to this problem are to either:

  • Programmatically in VBA execute the steps outlined above, or
  • Find out where in the database these fields are being stored and go directly to the database

  Can anyone else think of any other work-arounds

  Rob

  
  

• DW Developer

  Hi All,

  Found a solution.  Well, I didn't, but a friend of mine did.  I havn't done extensive testing on this solution, but initial playing looks good.

  By right-clicking where you are pasting and selecting 'Paste Special', then selecting 'Text' (Note: I didn't have a text option, I selected 'Values and number formats') everything seems to be pasted fine. 

  NOTE: You still have the strangness where over-length fields are displayed as '####' but all appears good.

  Thanks to Anne for this

  Rob

  
  

• MINA7343

  Rob,

  I tried what you have been doing but I'm puzzled to tell you that I  have no issues as reported by you. That does not mean I do not believe you.
  I know you put this same problem on OzTFS as well, but even there you had little luck so I decided to look at the issue for curiousity sake.

  Now I want to ask you one question before I shut up and let you reply. Do you have any tab, cariage returns,  or any non printable characters in your description fields It is very common to have them in description fields. And I can tell you those characters will truncate text in your copy paste operation in Excel.

  Done.
  Over to you now.

  Cheers,
  Search

   

  
  
  

• carrielm

  Hi there,

  Here is the problem. I am trying to migrate data from my old problem tracker database into TFS using the following steps:

  - Create Excel Spreadsheet 1 with ODBC connection to old problem tracker database to grab all required data

  - Create Excel Spreadsheet 2 with a connection to TFS with all required fields

  - Copy all required data from spreadsheet 1 to spreadsheet 2

  - Publish data in Spreadsheet 2 into TFS

  This process works beautifully, apart from one reasonably major problem. Data within fields are being truncated to 255 characters.

  The data in question is fine in the ODBC connection, so it is not the issue laid out in MSDN support article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189897/. I can also manually enter data in a TFS-Excel field greater than 255 characters. The issue is only in the copying process.

  What is going one here Does anyone have any fixes Does anyone have any suggested workarounds

  Cheers

  Rob Manger
  

  
  

• Arthlan

  Hi Antonio,

  Thanks for the reply. The main field I have noticed it on is not a custom field. It is the 'Description' field. Having said that, this is not the only field being truncated, but to answer your question, no these are not custom fields.

  Also, on a side note, to make sure I wasn't just behind thick/pig-headed I followed the suggested solution outlined in the KB referenced above and it had no effect, so I can be sure that it is not the case (and am not just relying on logic )

  Cheers

  Rob

  
  

• Gnanadurai

  This is a known issue. You may want to check out http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/189897/ for help. Thanks
  

• Bsurvery

  This is NOT the same issue (as I explained in the original post)!!
  
  The data coming back from the ODBC connection is fine. I can also copy and paste it between normal excel spreadsheets fine. The issue is ONLY when copying into a TFS-Excel spreadsheet.
  
  

• Ben Vanik

  Hi Rob,

  Can you please kindly tell me what fields you are setting more than 255 characters Are they custom fields

  
  

• mcland

  Hi Rob,

  Thanks for your reply. After you have done the conversion I assume that you can bring up the TFS list, and you see truncation of data in "Description" column. Can I know if you can restore the data in longer length in description column in the list And can you please do the followings:

  1. Put a focus on any of the data cell of the description column.

  2. Go to menu Data | Validation and let me know what it shows in Validation criteria in the Settings tab (Data Validation dialog)

  Thanks for your patience.

  
  

• Tony Vaughan

  Thanks for the reply (and sorry for the delay in the reply to the reply )
  
  This situation, while similar, is not what I am facing.
  
  Getting the data into excel form 1 (using ODBC from SQL database) works nicely.
  
  The issue lies in copying the data from excel form 1 (ODBC) to form 2 (TFS Query). This is where the data is being truncated.
  
  Does this make sense
  
  Cheers
  
  Rob
  
  

• dashley

  Hi Rob,

  I've seen the symptoms before. In my case we were using Excel through ODBC to query from the original database and then copy/paste to publish to TFS. The problem was an issue with the ODBC driver used by Excel. If I remember correctly, we used MS Access as an intermediate step between the data source and Excel and resolved the issue. Here is the support article from Microsoft regarding the data truncation. That was my scenario - I don't know if it applies to you or not.

  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189897/

  Good luck!
  -Dave

  
  

• Cem DEMiRKIR

  Hi Antonio,

  Not entirely sure I understand your first question. If I manually edit the contents of the cell in the description column, I CAN enter longer lengths of data. One strange thing to note, as that while I can do this, as soon as I enter more than 255 characters Excel displays the contents of the field as '####'. The contents are visible in the formula bar, but not in the overall spreadsheet view.

  As for your second question, I am assuming you are talking about the Description column in the TFS-Excel sheet The values on the Data Validation dialog are:

  Allow: Text Length
  Data: between
  Min: 0
  Max: 32767
  Ignore Blank: Checked

  Do you need any more details

  Cheers

  Rob

  
  

• Jkumar

  Rob,

  When you normally paste anything in a cell in Excel the cariage returns will result in trancation. I was sure that was the case in you situation.

  There may be more than one work-arounds. I can't really call them workarounds since it is not a problem with Excel since Excel behaves as designed. Not really a TFS issue either.

  To answer you question and solve you problem you could explore the WS interface provided with TFS services. I don't have access to TFS web services here at home so I can't pinpoint which one. I may quickly google and get back with some hints. You could write some code programatically use the web-services to import the Work items in TFS. Going to the SQL server DB is nto recommended.

  Hope it helps

  
  
  

• rternier

  Here is a solution/work around that helped me.

  I had similar problem while importing data using Jet driver from XL to SQL db. All I did was to ensure that the first 8 rows in the XL has the max data (more than 255 chars upto the max chars a cell could have), bakas the driver (ODBC or Jet) decides the datatype based on the first 8 rows. I tried this way and succeded.

  Subbs

  
  
  
• Data truncated to 255 characters when copying TFS-Excel form