Nov 24

Increasing field lengths in Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Today, me any my team was working on a new addon design and one of my teammate got a call from NAV 2015 client. Their query was to check whether if we can increase the length of the External Document No. 

So my colleague asked me that whether we should do that for them. 

I said try it and see… 

My view point is is that we should never change the length of a default field in Dynamics NAV. I have seen many developers at the very early stage of their carrier, they try to change the length of the fields. This includes me as well, I still remember how I change the length of the Document No of the General Journal line and Sales Header and how I worked hard to overcome that mistake I have done. 

But it helped me to learn lot about NAV and actually it tested me during that time, because it was my first assignment. So I won’t say don’t do it. All I am saying is do it in a test database and learn the mistake that you are doing. 
Because it is always good to learn from your mistakes.

Thank you and Regards,
Tharanga Chandrasekara

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1 comment

    • pallea on December 20, 2014 at 6:30 pm
    • #

    Hello there

    I must say that I totally disagree. 10-15 years ago it might be a "problem" but not anymore. All fields can easily be modified to 20 chars. It takes less than 10 minutes. Just create a form/page on table 2×41 – FIeld. Filter on Field witth the value @*external* and voila then you have found all fields. You can change the length directly in this page.

    In order to find length issues in variables in code.. Then simply create a Sales/Purchase Quote with a external document no. longer than 10 chars. Then convert the documents into an order and try to post it If any errors debug and change the code.

    It probably takes 20-30 minutes to fix that. Then all there is left is to correct some reports. But again they are easily found.

    Only challenge could be that Microsoft do monthly updates and you have to re-do it all over again and again. BUT with the new upgrade toolkit – this process can easily be automatized.

    So if one of my customers asks, then I am not going to se 100% no…

    Thanks
    Palle Arenoft
    NAVspecialist

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