Email tasks only accepting piped text or embedded data 1024 characters in length or less | XM Community
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Hi All,
We've setup some email tasks to send out to guests after they complete a survey. The email was going to include a couple of piped text and embedded fields. One of which is a text entry field where we've limited it to 1500 characters. Upon testing we discovered that we couldn't pull through anything bigger than 1024 characters whether we used a piped text element or an embedded field.

I came across an article (https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-flow/standard-elements/embedded-data/) stating that the value in embedded fields could be no longer than 1024 characters but this was for embedded fields, not piped text - or at least they didn't state is was for piped text. However when I was working with the Qualtrics support on this issue they said that they could get a much higher number of characters through and the email task would work, something which resembled a limit of 20,000 characters, which then links me to this page: https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/145/is-there-a-limit-to-the-number-of-characters-anybody-can-type-in-a-text-entry-question which states that the limit of a text box is 20,000 characters.

I have tried numerous ways but still can't get higher than 1024 characters. The piped text syntax has been something like: ${q://QID15/ChoiceTextEntryValue}
Funnily enough, the ticket task works fine, it accepts strings greater than 1024 characters. It's just the email task which is the problem and returns errors like this in the Reporting & History section of the Actions tab.
Task Output{
"name": "ACTIONS.ERROR_CODES.USER_CONFIGURATION_ERROR",
"message": "There were validation errors. Correct the errors and try again. Fields with errors: pipedText[q://QID1/ChoiceTextEntryVa",
"needRetry": false
}

I thought at first the validation error it was referring to was the validation I had on the question (1500 characters) but removing this made no difference.

Hope someone else has experienced this problem AND found a way to carry over 1025 or more characters in an email task.

Thanks

Rod Pestell

Hi Rod_Pestell!
I've had experience with a similar 1024 character limit in place for redirect links carrying over from stack overflow limitations. Because this limit is exactly the same, my assumption would be that email tasks/piped text have the same limit.
With regards to the 20,000 character limit, this is tied to an open text response, which is treated differently as it is entered by the respondent during the survey session, not something set up on the back-end.
If you'd like a better explanation than I'm able to provide here, 😅I'd recommend reaching out to Qualtrics Support so that they can check this theory with our internal team.

Hi @ChristianB,

Thanks for the reply. Qualtrics support didn't know why I couldn't send more than 1024 characters and I think they still have the ticket open !! 😉 In the end we had to remove the information we wanted to add into the email and just added in an alternate list of sub categories. Very frustrating, I keep finding things like this - big gaping holes of information missing from their support pages. It's a thank less task keeping the support pages up to date I agree, but being a CX platform, they should know that it's stuff like that which makes the client very frustrated and a cause to waste a lot of time trying to understand why something isn't working, when all they needed to put in the support pages was that for emails, only the first 1024 characters will be used.

If you ever find a way round it, please do share!! :)

Thanks

Rod

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