# Can the in-game notes be updated to use more than 3900 characters? **URL:** \ **Category:** Player Features & Ideas\ **Created:** [June 12, 2020, 5:08am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487 "2020-06-12T05:08:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Valiran\_Teleros](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/valiran_teleros/32/504787_2.png) [@Valiran\_Teleros](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Valiran_Teleros)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:08am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/1 "2020-06-12T05:08:33Z")
I don’t really understand why this is a thing. I can get not wanting players to put entire novels worth of text in their notes, but could we get an upgrade to how many characters the notes will hold, **including** the invisible formatting chars? ---
**Author:** ![Nevyn\_Auscent](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/nevyn_auscent/32/255124_2.png) [@Nevyn\_Auscent](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Nevyn_Auscent)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:09am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/2 "2020-06-12T05:09:35Z")
Can’t you just make a new note? ---
**Author:** ![Valiran\_Teleros](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/valiran_teleros/32/504787_2.png) [@Valiran\_Teleros](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Valiran_Teleros)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:12am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/3 "2020-06-12T05:12:55Z")
Yes, but it’s annoying to keep switching between them. I don’t see why they’re currently restricted to 3900 chars, but if there’s a good reason for CCP choosing that as the limit then I’d love to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![Xeux](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/xeux/32/428022_2.png) [@Xeux](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Xeux)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:15am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/4 "2020-06-12T05:15:54Z")
I’m sure one of the numerous software developers on these forums would be happy to explain to you why variables with a pre-defined maximum length are more computationally efficient than strings that can grow to an indefinite length. ---
**Author:** ![Valiran\_Teleros](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/valiran_teleros/32/504787_2.png) [@Valiran\_Teleros](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Valiran_Teleros)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:21am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/5 "2020-06-12T05:21:29Z")
Please do! I’m learning software development myself ATM, and I’d love to hear your explanation! 😃 Also, I’m not talking about removing the limit entirely, just raising it. ---
**Author:** ![Zhalyd\_Lyehin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/zhalyd_lyehin/32/358574_2.png) [@Zhalyd\_Lyehin](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Zhalyd_Lyehin)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:42am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/6 "2020-06-12T05:42:04Z")
🔴 I would also love to hear why having dozens of notes would be more efficient than having half as many or a quarter of the count of notes with most of the content concentrated in them. ---
**Author:** ![Nevyn\_Auscent](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/nevyn_auscent/32/255124_2.png) [@Nevyn\_Auscent](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Nevyn_Auscent)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 5:58am UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/7 "2020-06-12T05:58:27Z")
Because strings in a database? Which then is easy to control etc. I’m not a real software engineer though I have programming experience so a real one can probably give you a better answer. But I’m hazarding a guess that they don’t store notes as individual files but a database. ---
**Author:** ![Luscius\_Uta](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/luscius_uta/32/385796_2.png) [@Luscius\_Uta](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Luscius_Uta)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 12:35pm UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/8 "2020-06-16T12:35:17Z")
I would also like to know who is the brilliant mind at CCP who thought that automatically saving notes after changes is a good feature despite the lack of undo option. ---
**Author:** ![Efraya](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/user_avatar/forums.eveonline.com/efraya/32/213228_2.png) [@Efraya](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/Efraya)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 2:30pm UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/9 "2020-06-16T14:30:31Z")
EVE uses MS-SQL as the database server. I’m assuming there is a notes tables with charId, noteId and noteContents. To store data in a column, you have to define the type to store in the column. SQL server provides NVARCHAR(Max) - This basically means, **any** character can be stored here. Up until the maximum available size. (2GB) So when you run queries on this table, because there is a possibility of there being **up to** 2GB of data in that column, the query analyzer has to account for that and be prepared to allocate this amount of data during the query execution (Even if there isn’t that much data there) This is why there is a specific size set to this column. Take this as an over simplification. I am not a database guru by any stretch, although I am a professional software developer. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/eveonline/original/3X/4/1/41ec4921cbaca7a6f9ea556e7cc20018461eae5e.png) [@system](https://forums.eveonline.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2020, 2:30pm UTC](https://forums.eveonline.com/t/can-the-in-game-notes-be-updated-to-use-more-than-3900-characters/248487/10 "2020-09-14T14:30:31Z")
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