Increase the Latest Comment Column Character Limit

Keith Bessette

The 'Latest Comment' column is a great feature to add the most current information into sheets and reports. It's helpful to be able to provide our executive team printed reports containing all of the information they need. And they don't have to worry about accessing Smartsheet directly. Unfortunately, we recently found there's a 350-character limit on the 'Latest Comment' column. So, we're not able to provide all of the information in a report if a comment exceeds 350 characters. If the 'Latest Comment' column could be adjusted to allow the default character limit of a text/number field of 4,000 characters, then we'd be more likely to be able to fit the whole comment.

trevrobwhite

The latest comment field type clips at 355 characters, whereas the number/text field allows for up to 4000 characters please can you allow us to customise the amount of text displayed before the comment is clipped.

Krzysztof Wroblewski

I will appreciate this function as we use this to track comments via update requests and comments are truncated.

Krzysztof Wroblewski

I will appreciate this function as we use this to track comments via update requests and comments are truncated.

gwtyler

The character length of the Latest Comment field needs to be increased. I use the field for task updates and project updates. The current character length is sufficient for a task update, but not sufficient for a project update. Project updates require more details. When the character length of the field is reached an ellipsis is displayed. When a pdf report is created to show the latest comments for projects, the ellipsis is displayed on the report instead of the entire latest comment. When the character length of the field is reached and no report is printed, the ellipsis is displayed in the respective row and the Conversations pane has to be opened to view the entire latest comment as opposed to viewing it in the sheet column/row.

Best Regards,

Fcamarata

We would like to see this limit increased as well. Otherwise, sharing the sheet as an Excel attachment is not effective.

AngieChristophersen

We would also love to see this limit increased. We use this field weekly to track the history of the task and in some cases, provide an Executive Summary for the full week which may include more than 350 characters. While we could use a Text column instead, only Admin level users can see the historical comments and we'd like the entire team to see them.

Amy.Mizzi.RP

We're using the Latest Comments field in a customer-facing project artifact, and it would be so helpful to have this limit increased!

Rather than providing customers access to edit our sheet (and view internal-only items), I'm notifying them when certain triggers occur on the sheet. Latest Comment is one of the most important fields I include in the body of those notification emails. I'm trying to train my team, but currently, customers are receiving notification emails where the Latest Comments cut off, and it causes a great deal of confusion.

Please consider this improvement to a great feature!

James Robertson

My team utilizes the latest column feature in every one of our project plan templates. Increasing the character limit would greatly reduce the amount of times project managers need to provide clarification to leadership on status updates due to the cut off.

dtb3

This feature has been revolutionary in my reporting process, but cutting off at 355 characters is absolutely frustrating. I need to go in and edit comments entered by others so that they will fit in the length on a regular basis.

Krzysztof Wroblewski

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/418773#Comment_418773

As a workaround I copy manually content of last comment to text column. That's is doable only as there are not that many comments added as per weekly cycle.

Andersonk

Please make the latest comment longer to support automated reporting. If the commentor was put at the end it would also place importance on the message and the commentor/editor could be investigated as needed along with the timestamp.

Paula Katzenberg

I agree on the increase character limit to the latest comment ability. My team tracks construction updates and leadership would benefit from getting the entire update on the sheet, rather than a < or = to 4000 character limit. some updates are lengthy and all the information provided in the comments is needed. If the comments have almost no limit then so should the latest comment.

WillWood

I would love the latest comment field to be increased beyond the 355 char limit. I have got a formula, with a helper sheet, that builds an 'All Comments' field that basically displays the comments thread in the sheet, but without having to go into the sidebar for each row. This is really useful for project reporting as you can build up a history of events. I get that there is a 4000 char limit to a cell, that is ok by me as otherwise it gets unwieldy, but it would be really helpful if the latest comments wasn't restricted like this.