Navision description field for import

Hi guys!

I need some ideas. I have a customer who has a long description ( almost 60 characters) and he does not want to cut those to fit 30 characters as Navision standard. So he want to import all those items without loosing the description.

So my recommendation was to use description 2 but it’s not appear in several reports so he may need more customisations.

is there any other options that may be used??

I know that there is also extended text but it’s not used for work order. So any other ideas?? If not then I guess customisationx will be done.

Thanks for any input.

Usually it is done by inserting into description 2 (or adding new fields like description 3 or more).

In that case you have to change a few reports only. Every other solution is a problem and long work.

Hi Taty,

You actually points out your alternatives very well. Now you don’t mention what table you talk about, but since you talk about Work Orders and Extended Text then I assume that you talk about the Item table.

I would sure recommend you to use both Description AND Description 2. Yes there is no way to do this without modifications. But it’s surely not something that would take a lot of effort.

Thanks to both of you guys!

So I will go with description2.

You’re welcome!

Hi

My memory tells me that in all but a few places the item description is referenced as 50 characters. The obvious exception is the item table. As a simple check the item ledger entry is 50, the sales and purchase lines and history are 50. This causes report issues and there are tables like the BOM component that are 30 so you will hit text to text overflows if you do not catch them all. However when I have done this usually 95% of the descriptions fit into 50, so you reduce the issue, and sometimes in legacy systems the ones over 50 have **DO NOT USE in them!

However be very aware that this post is not from a developer, lets listen to them cringe and see how much pain I have just caused [:D] However it is still an option!

In the early days, the concept was that journals should be consistent, and they allowed for a combination of the 30 character description field, plus 20 characters that could come from document numbers or item numbers. These were promoted in the development of Add-ons, but that is long gone, so normally the 50 characters can be used. BUT extending the length of Description fields ALWAYS bites back eventually.

Well you will have to customize the size of the field everywhere - so customization will have to be done regardless.

When you import the long description have it go into a Variable - text size 60 named Mydescription (for example)

then with the code:

//60 Character Description field on import automatically split into 2
Item.Description := COPYSTR(mydescription, 1, 30);
Item.“Description 2” := COPYSTR(mydescription,31,30);

& it’s done.