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Article CSV Export Truncating Long Notes Fields

Summary

When exporting work orders or service reports to CSV format, text entered into Notes fields that exceeds 32,767 characters is being silently truncated, resulting in incomplete data in the exported file.

Symptoms

You may notice this issue if:

  • Exported CSV files contain notes that appear to end abruptly with no closing punctuation or complete thought
  • Comparing the exported data against the original record in FieldPulse reveals that the final portions of lengthy notes are missing
  • Character counts in exported cells consistently stop at or near 32,767
  • No error or warning is displayed during the export process

Affected Versions and Platforms

This behavior has been observed across:

  • FieldPulse Web Application versions 3.1 through 3.2.2
  • All supported browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)
  • Both standard and custom report exports

Cause

In my experience, this limitation stems from the underlying CSV generation library used by FieldPulse's reporting engine, which enforces a maximum cell length of 32,767 characters to maintain compatibility with older spreadsheet applications, particularly Microsoft Excel. While this was originally implemented as a safeguard, it does not account for modern use cases where technicians may enter extensive diagnostic notes, multi-step repair procedures, or detailed customer interaction logs.

What I typically recommend is understanding that the data itself is not lost in FieldPulse — the full notes remain intact in the database and are visible within the application. The truncation occurs only at the point of CSV generation.

Resolution

There are several approaches to address this depending on your specific needs:

Option 1: Use PDF or Excel Format (Recommended)

For reports containing lengthy notes, I generally advise selecting Excel (.xlsx) or PDF as your export format rather than CSV. These formats do not impose the 32,767 character limitation and will preserve complete notes.

  1. Navigate to Reports > Work Orders (or your desired report)
  2. Click Export
  3. Select Excel (.xlsx) from the format dropdown
  4. Complete the export

Option 2: Split Long Notes Before Export

If CSV format is strictly required for downstream processing, consider establishing a workflow where technicians break lengthy entries into multiple shorter notes or use structured fields for detailed information rather than free-form notes.

Option 3: API Retrieval

For automated integrations where CSV is the expected format, what I typically recommend is retrieving the data via the FieldPulse API, which returns complete field values without truncation. You can then transform this data into your required format using your own tooling.

Workaround

Until a permanent fix is implemented, if you must use CSV exports and cannot switch formats:

  1. Export to Excel (.xlsx) format first
  2. Open in Excel or compatible spreadsheet application
  3. Save or export as CSV from that application

This two-step process preserves the full content because Excel's export handles the conversion differently than FieldPulse's native CSV generator.

Status

This issue has been logged with our engineering team. A fix targeted for release 3.3 will increase or remove the character limit for CSV exports. I will update this article when additional information becomes available.

In the meantime, if you have specific reporting workflows that are blocked by this limitation, please reach out through your normal support channels and reference this article. We want to make sure you're set up for success, and there may be additional configuration options depending on your account setup.

  • in reply to Brandon Okafor

    Hi Brandon — 3.3 is currently scheduled for late Q2, though I don't have a firm date I can share yet. We want to make sure you're set up for success here.

    In the meantime, I'd like to connect you with our Professional Services team. They may be able to set up an automated API pull that delivers CSV-formatted data without the truncation issue. This would remove the manual workaround from your team's plate entirely.

    I'll follow up with you directly to discuss whether this makes sense for your workflow. Thanks for flagging the operational impact!

  • We need this fixed. My reporting team can't use Excel format — our downstream BI tool only accepts CSV. The two-step workaround adds 15 minutes to a process we run daily.

    When is 3.3 scheduled?

  • in reply to Rachel Nguyen

    Rachel — the limit is not from RFC 4180. CSV as a format has no inherent length restriction.

    The 32,767 limit originates from Microsoft Excel's row limitations (specifically, the maximum characters per cell that Excel 97-2003 could handle). Many CSV libraries inherited this constraint for backward compatibility. FieldPulse uses Apache Commons CSV 1.10, which defaults to this limit unless explicitly configured otherwise.

    Engineering is updating the CSVFormat configuration to set setMaxRecordLength() appropriately. Targeted for 3.3 as noted above.

  • I can reproduce this consistently. Tested with FieldPulse 3.2.1, Chrome 122.0.6261.112, Windows 11.

    Steps:

    1. Created work order with notes field containing 45,000 characters (lorem ipsum generator)
    2. Exported to CSV
    3. Cell truncated at exactly 32,767 characters
    4. Same work order exported to .xlsx contained full text

    I have confirmed that the API endpoint /api/v2/work-orders/{id} returns the complete notes field without truncation.

    Question: Is the 32,767 limit a hard constraint of the CSV spec, or is this specific to the library implementation? RFC 4180 does not specify cell length limits.