TF401262: Value of long text field System.Description exceeds the maximum length allowed length of 1048576 - tfs

Question

We are using TFS 2017 update 1 (on premise install). When I try to paste a large number of HTML tables and lots of text into the Description field, I get the following error:
TF401262: Value of long text field System.Description exceeds the maximum length allowed length of 1048576.
Can I change this limit ?

Answer 1

I had the same kind of necessity, so I tried a little bit harder...
This is my tfs database (Tfs_Dev):
I executed this procedure to add a registry value in TFS configuration:
EXEC [dbo].[prc_SetRegistryValue]
#partitionId=1,
#key='#\Service\WorkItemTracking\Settings\MaxLongTextSize\',
#value='2000000000'
I could find this solution after looking in TFS source code, thanks to a great tool named dnspy
You can find the specific TFS dll in a path similar to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 15.0\Application Tier\Web Services\bin\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.dll

Answer 2

Tested and cannot reproduce this issue on my side. But obviously it has the limitation for the maximum allowed length.
Generally String fields take a max of 255 characters. PlainText/HTML will take a max of 32K. If it crosses this limits, you can opt to store it to a file and add it as an attachment.
However you can try to change the limit by editing the web.config of the TFS site follow the instruction mentioned in this article : Easy Ways to Upload and Validate Large Files in ASP.NET
If you use IIS7 and you want to upload files larger than the
restricted 30000000 bytes or 28.6 MB, you can add the following code
to your web.config file in order to set that value to 100 MB:
<system.webServer>
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="104857600" />
</requestFiltering>
</security>
</system.webServer>
If that still not work then please share the steps to reproduce the issue, especially for the "large number of HTML tables and lots of text" you mentioned (You can store the strings in a file e.g word if it's too large then share the file in Onedrive or another site we can access).