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I hope this will clear up any confusion.
The field that I wanted to change to multiline was one of the fields in the SQL table. No matter what format I used for the field in the SQL table – nvarchar, varchar, text, that field would only show as a single line of text in SharePoint.
So as a workaround, I added a textarea field to the form using your product. I used a HTML Section to add a table and the text area field within that table to a tab. I attached the screen shots of this in a previous post.
What I was trying to do was to present users with a multiple line textarea field to enter their data into. This would be a substitute for the single line text fields that SharePoint provides.
And when the user would save the record, custom javascript that I wrote would take the contents of the textarea field and place that data in the field in the SQL table.
The textarea field works fine. I can enter a lot of text into it. The javascript code is unable to set the value of the field on the SQL table using the text from the textarea. The code works if I use a regular SharePoint field, but fails to set the field if it is on a SQL table.
So right now it is looking more and more like this is a limitation of BDC.
I also created a form for the list using InfoPath and it looks like that product allows you to set the field to multiline regardless of the limitations that BDC places on the standard SharePoint form. I would rather not use InfoPath, but to get around this limitation, it looks like I have no other choice.
Attached the screen shots for the text area that you requested.
I created a new external list and used the same HTML Section and JavaScript from the standard SharePoint list. The JavaScript code is able to retrieve the text from the text area, but it can’t set the contents of the text column in the SQL table. It works fine when it runs on a regular SharePoint list. It is able to take the text out of the text area and insert it into the SharePoint List column.
Right now I am wondering if this is a limitation of BDC.
Hi Alexander,
I found that post last week. I added a “text” column to the SQL table, created a new External Connection, and then created a new External list. The “text” column still shows as a single line when you put the record in edit mode. We are running SharePoint 2010. Perhaps this is fixed in SharePoint 2013.
I just created a 2nd list, but used InfoPath for the forms and was able to configure the “text” columns as multiline. However I would prefer to use DFFS for this project.
So to try that other approach that I mentioned in my post, I added a HTML Section to a tab on a form for a regular SharePoint list. The HTML Section adds a multiline text area to the tab. And I created some java script to take the contents of that text area and copy it to one of the other single line text fields when the record is being saved.
It works with a standard SharePoint list field. Next step is to test it against an external list.
