Multi-line-Text Columns

Using Multi-line Text Columns you may enter data containing a long description, for instance, project notes, customer address, product description etc.

If a column comprises the data that don't look or behave the way you want, you may edit column General Properties and the properties defined by the column type.

General Properties:

Properties defined by the column type:
Configuring the Specific Properties you may set the number of data lines, specify the form of data entry and select an appropriate text format.

Multi-line Text Options
Column Property	Description
Lines to edit	This property allows a user to set the number of data lines that will be presented in the multi-line text field. By setting the Lines to edit value a user specifies the display height of the column cell; at that the number of characters entered in the field is not restricted. Please note that this field is required.
Lines to display	This property allows a user to set the number of data lines that will be presented in the table or on the form, the other lines will be hidden. For instance, you can display only two lines, to review the other lines, you need to click on the More… button.
Data Entry	This property allows a user to specify the form of data entry: Select the Type-in option if you want to display this field as a simple multi-line text field Select the Append Only option if you want to add information to the end of already stored data every time the column cell is modified Select the Prepend Only option if you want to add information at the beginning of already stored data every time the column cell is modified
Format	For example, you want to add and view the following data in the “Notes” Text-Multiline column. The Format property allows a user to select an appropriate text format for displaying data in the Text-Multiline columns. Select the Simple text option if you want to enter data as plain text; If the Simple text option is set, the “Notes” data can be displayed in the following way Select the Preformatted text option to preserve spaces, indentations and line breaks of the initial text chunk; If the Preformatted option is set, the “Notes” data can be displayed in the following way Select the Markup option to display a supplementary formatting toolbar above the multi-line text field that will allow basic formatting operations with text, such as indenting paragraphs, inserting lists, creating headers, and so on. If the Markup option is set, the “Notes” data can be displayed in the following way
Help	When the Help text property is filled in, the question mark is displayed near the field name on the View/Edit form. If you point to this question mark, the pop-up with a tip or a help text message will be shown.

There may be times when you find out some incorrect values stored in the Append Only (or the Prepend Only) Text-Multiline column, but you are not able to correct them in a simple way. To edit the mistakes you can temporarily change the Data Entry mode to Type-In , correct the mistakes and then revert it back to the Append Only (or the Prepend Only) property.

How to update Append/Prepend multi-line-text columns by assignments

The Append/Prepend option is in effect only for the user mode. Therefore assignments added to custom buttons and workflow actions always overwrite all the content of a multi-line-text field. To avoid this, the following simple workaround can be helpful:

In the assignment you should concatenate a new value with an existing value of the multi-line-text field. For example:

List("\n", "Prepend", [Multiline Text])

-- or --

List("\n", [Multiline Text], "Append")

The bold timestamp line used in a Append/Prepend multi-line-text column is just another line of text which is enclosed in brackets and has a time part formatted in a special way. Here is the formula allowing to build such timestamp line:

"[" & Replace(XMLFormat(ToTimestamp(Today(),ToTimeOfDay(Now()))), "+00:00", "Z") & " " & UserToName(User()) & "]"

For example, if you need to prepend some text to a multi-line-text column via assignment, you can use the following formula:

List("\n", "[" & Replace(XMLFormat(ToTimestamp(Today(),ToTimeOfDay(Now()))), "+00:00", "Z") & " " & UserToName(User()) & "]", "text to prepend", [Multiline Text])

In case you need to append some text to a multi-line-text column via assignment, you can use this formula:

List("\n", [Multiline Text], "[" & Replace(XMLFormat(ToTimestamp(Today(),ToTimeOfDay(Now()))), "+00:00", "Z") & " " & UserToName(User()) & "]","text to append")

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