Friday, May 25, 2012

Too Many Characters Error

Some people wonder why they get "too many characters" error messages when posting a description using our Rich Text Editor. Let's take a look at some formatted text below. If you are only counting the actual characters this is 27 words, 177 characters without spaces and 201 characters with spaces.

OutdoorEd.com
The Outdoor Professional's Resource presents:
The Adventure & Recreation Law Center
by Reb Gregg & Catherine Hansen-Stamp
A new online subscription service available only from OutdoorEd.com

If we want to format this with the font sizes and colors as shown using HTML it will look like this and this adds an extra 210 characters (with spaces) for the HTML tags which are shown below in blue.

<p><span class="style1">OutdoorEd.com</span><br />
<span class="style2">The Outdoor Professional's Resource presents:</span><br />
<span class="style3"><strong>The Adventure & Recreation Law Center</strong><br />
<strong>by Reb Gregg & Catherine Hansen-Stamp</strong></span><br />
<span class="style4"><strong>A new online subscription service available only from OutdoorEd.com</strong><br />

Now if we were to cut and paste this same formatted text from the original Word document look below at what is actually pasted in from the Word document. Wow that's a lot of extra characters. That is why you'll get "too many character" messages even though your actual character count from Word is below the limit. Word isn't counting all of the extra formatting that it brings across when you cut and paste.

There are a few ways to avoid this problem.

Use the Paste From Word Icon in the Editor which will strip out most of the Word formatting
Paste from Word, strip font will also remove font settings
Paste as Plain Text will put only plain text in the Editor which you can then format in the editor
Paste as HTML which will paste HTML from work
Cut and paste your information from Word into something like Notepad that will strip out all the formatting and just leave it as text. Then cut and paste that into the Editor. You can add whatever formatting you need to the text in the Editor.

Rad Editor

What Word Pastes 'Under the covers'

<p>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document" />
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12" />
<meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12" />
<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\RICKCU~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_filelist.xml" />

<link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\RICKCU~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_themedata.thmx" />
<link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\RICKCU~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_colorschememapping.xml" />

<style>

</style>

<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 24pt; font-family: "Myriad Pro","sans-serif";">OutdoorEd.com<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: "Myriad Pro","sans-serif";">The Outdoor Professional's Resource presents:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt; font-family: "Myriad Pro","sans-serif"; color: #004d87;">The Adventure &
Recreation Law Center<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt; font-family: "Myriad Pro","sans-serif"; color: #004d87;">by Reb Gregg & Catherine
Hansen-Stamp<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: "Myriad Pro","sans-serif";">A new online subscription service available only from OutdoorEd.com<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>