InfoPath Rich Text Box Limit

The InfoPath rich text box limit is 25,700 characters (with spaces).  How do I know this?  Trial and error.....This is the popup message that refers to the InfoPath text box limit:

Good job InfoPath! Now someone has to delete their content until they are below that special limit (that you have no way of knowing while working with an our-of-the-box InfoPath rich text box). 

 

Anyways, for some reason I can't seem to find any information online for InfoPath's rich text box limit, so that is why I am writing about it.  

Why is it important?  For most of you it is not important, or at least not important right now.  What makes this topic important is the cool merge capability of InfoPath - the ability to merge several InfoPath data fields into one data field (also creates a new InfoPath form in the process). 

If you are merging a lot of these InfoPath forms at once and want to capture ALL of the rich text box data, then it is important to set limits or restrictions for how much a user can type, or to just plan ahead before you have to merge 1,000 reports at the end of the year. There are many ways around getting stuck, one is do several smaller merges and just edit the rich text box fields to only include the most important info, then to do a final merge of all of the smaller merged forms.  

If you are considering doing an end-of-the-year merge of X # of reports, then use the simple math equation below to see if you will approach the rich text box field limit or not:

# of InfoPath forms submitted in a week * average # of characters with spaces per InfoPath form * how many weeks of InfoPath forms you want to merge:

Example:

100 submitters

200 characters with spaces in each report

Quarterly merge required (for simplicity, lets assume every month is 28 days), so a total of 12 weeks

100*200*12 = 240,000 characters with spaces!  Oh No! Looks like someone needs to reconsider their approach for this issue.  

On a side note-this whole InfoPath rich text box problem is not a problem if you aren't going to edit any of the rich text box data after the merge.  All you'll get is a warning popup and then you can save it to SharePoint.  But, if you are over the rich text box limit then you can only delete data (not add anything) until you are below the limit. 

Why does InfoPath take 30+ seconds to open?

If you are using InfoPath in SharePoint, then you'll definitely want to read this if your InfoPath form is taking more than a few seconds to open or publish.  This applies to both InfoPath 2007 and 2010.

As long as the InfoPath form doesn't have a bigillion rules/views/fields, then you should be able to publish the form to MOSS/SP 2010 (as a form designer) in less than 15 seconds.  Users should be able to open the form in just a few seconds - typically less than 5 seconds.

Solution: In Internet Explorer (IE) settings, uncheck "Automatically detect settings" in the Local Area Network (LAN) Settings. 

Here are a few screenshots on how/where this is located:

1) From the IE tools menu, select "Internet Options"

 

2) Click on the "Connections" tab.

3) Click on the "LAN settings" button (highlighted above)

 

4) Make sure "Automatically detect settings" is not selected.  

Once "Automatically detect settings" is deselected, your InfoPath forms should open very quickly, and saving them back to SharePoint should be pretty instantaneous as well. 

According to Microsoft, "If the Automatically detect settings check box is selected in Internet Explorer, the Windows Update client uses the WPAD feature to locate a proxy server."  If you happen to work for a company that requires this setting to not be changed, then please post a comment.  I would also like to hear if anyone does NOT have any InfoPath loading issues if this IE setting is selected.

Also - I don't have enough evidence at this point, but making this LAN settings change may also resolve an authentication issue where users are prompted to log in once to open the InfoPath form, and again to save it.