Rich text fields truncating data

Rich text fields are passed through the general “the_content” filter, which is accessible to other plugins and the theme, so there is the possibility that is affecting what is shown. It would not affect what is stored, however.

Looking at the data in the admin has the same issue, to really see what is in the database, you need to use phpMyAdmin (or similar) to look at the database directly.

What I suggest you do is look at the “Use WordPress Auto Formatting” setting in the plugin settings under the advanced tab. You can take rich text fields off of the general filter there.

OK, set “Use WordPress Auto Formatting” to “None”. No difference, even when I re-add the data. Looked directly at the database “description” field data. It’s truncated as well. However, there was a field after the “description” label that said “tinytext”, the same as my standard text fields. Disabled ALL plugins except for the four I have from you. No difference. Changed theme to Divi. No difference.

So, everything has been eliminated or changed except for my hosting provider (GoDaddy). The only other constant I have at this point are the four plugins from xnau. I’m at a loss.

Update – I changed the “description” field from rich text to text, then back to rich text (now shows as text instead of tinytext in DB). It now seems to be working for that field. Will hafta do the same for the other rich text fields.

Yes, the field type should be “text” for rich text and text area fields.

OK, I have reviewed all of my rich text fields directly in the DB and changed them all from tinytext to text. But every time I create a new rich text field, I have to go through the same process. I don’t know if this is happening to others, but, if so, it’s a sure way to lose valuable data if not fixed before importing or adding data.

I’ll have to check into that. You’re right, it should give you a “text” datatype when you create or change to a rich text or text area field.

Firstly, fabulous plugin thanks very much for all your hard work.
Secondly, I had the same problem as lance2j and (can’t find the post just now) but found a post about going into phpmyadmin and manually changing the field types from tinytext to text which resolved my problem. Do you think it worth having a brief sentence about this in the plugins documentation?
My thanks,
Rog

BTW, there is a simpler way, without going directly into the DB, to fix this, but you must be VERY CAREFUL if your fields already contain any formatted text. All this will be lost through the following process, which seems to work most of the time. If your rich text field already contains rich text formatting, you are better off going into the DB and changing the field type manually.

Create your rich text field. Save fields. Then change the rich text field to text (this will strip out all rich text formatting!). Save fields. Change field back to rich text and save fields. Test by adding a large block of text (that would be truncated if the field is in tinytext). If it doesn’t work the first time, try again. I’m now making this part of my process any time I add a new rich text field.

lance2j thanks! Should this topic be marked as resolved now?
Rog

Personally, though I have a work-around, I would not mark it as resolved. I lost a tremendous amount of data before I realized what was happening. I suspect this will happen to others. It’s clearly a bug that needs to be resolved.

Yep lance2j I too spent 3 or 4 days wondering why my new creations in the database were being truncated though, luckily I was moving from hard coded non-database elements to those used by Participants Database (PD) so I always had a copy of the content for each entry before finally committing to using the PD.

I’m sort of suggesting that, a) it’s a problem for more than one user and therefore might be useful to describe a workaround in the documentation (or maybe address this a fix) and, b) you and xnau webdesign have come up with workarounds so, although you might class this as a bug, there are ways to resolve the issue.

Your post led me to fix my own problem so my thanks to you for asking the Q!
R