File Properties In Windows Explorer

[Ed Carden]

When you right-click on a file from within Windows Explorer and select
'Properties' you get a dialog with several tabs one of which is 'Summary'.
The Summary tab contains fields for entering meta data info about the file.
It has always been my understanding that of these fields the 'Comments'
filed which looks like it holds more text then any other field is fixed to
accept only a small portion of text, around 256 characters I think. Today
just by chance I happened to switch the view to 'Advanced' by clicking on
the link at the bottom of the tab and entered information in the Comments
field. I don't know why but just out of curiosity I decided to see if I
could enter more text this way and sure enough it worked. I was able to get
far more text stored in this field when I was using the Advanced view then
the Simple view.

My question is, does anyone know exactly what the max amount of text each of
these fields can hold in the 2 different views?

Thanks
Ed Carden

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

This is on music files - MP2s, WMA etc? I've just put 1,104 characters into
the comments box in Simple view and they were accepted - with a .WMA file.
So I don't know what the maximum may be for either views.

 

[Alex Nichol]

When you right-click on a file from within Windows Explorer and select
'Properties' you get a dialog with several tabs one of which is 'Summary'.
The Summary tab contains fields for entering meta data info about the file.
It has always been my understanding that of these fields the 'Comments'
filed which looks like it holds more text then any other field is fixed to
accept only a small portion of text, around 256 characters I think. Today
just by chance I happened to switch the view to 'Advanced' by clicking on
the link at the bottom of the tab and entered information in the Comments
field. I don't know why but just out of curiosity I decided to see if I
could enter more text this way and sure enough it worked. I was able to get
far more text stored in this field when I was using the Advanced view then
the Simple view.

My question is, does anyone know exactly what the max amount of text each of
these fields can hold in the 2 different views?

In NTFS they produce essentially an auxiliary file that goes around with
the main file (but probably not over third party nets or on burning to
CD) So I don't think there is any very specific limit.