SharePoint: How to create hyperlink column with more than 255 characters?

The short answer is you can’t, but that wouldn’t make a very useful article, wouldn’t it? First, let’s identify the issue. You have a SharePoint list where you want to store a URL and use the “Hyperlink” type for the column. But when you try to insert an URL with more than 255 characters, you get the following error message:

URL may not contain more than 255 characters

One may wonder that these URLs are pretty large, and no one uses them, but Microsoft themselves generates URLs with more than 255 characters. Try to get the URL of a file in a SharePoint document library or Teams, and you’ll see it, especially if it’s nested in many folders.

The advantage of using URLs is that we can have a friendly text that replaces the URL, like this:

It’s nicer to see and much more helpful, but since we have this hard limitation, we need to consider it, so let’s look at an alternative.

Custom format

The idea is the following: Since we cannot have a column with the URL, we need to have something that can support all the data that we can throw at it but also hide the URL and replace it with a friendly link that we can push.

To do that, let’s do the following:

1. Create a new column with the “Multiple lines of text” type
2. Customise the format of the column to our taste.

Create the column

To create the column, here’s what you need to do. First select “+ Add a new column” or the “+” sign you can find between the columns.

Both will work. Next, select the “Multiple lines of text.”

Please be sure to select “multiple lines of text” and not “single line of text”, since it will enable us to store more than 255 characters. The “single line of text” has the same limitation as the “hyperlink” type.

Now that we have a new column let’s look at how to format it.

Format the column

Now that we have the column, we can put long URLs there. But if we don’t format it, it looks like this:

We don’t want to show this to our users, so let’s look at it better.

In the column options, select “Format column.”

Select “Advanced mode” (don’t worry, I’ll provide the code and explain everything).

This is the section that we’ll edit.

Let me show you what we will insert and then explain the code.

{
    "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/sp/v2/column-formatting.schema.json",
    "elmType": "a",
    "txtContent": "Text",
    "attributes": {
        "target": "_blank",
        "href": "=@currentField"
    }
}

Replace the code that you have there with the one above.

And the field will look like this.

So what’s happening here? If we don’t provide any customization, SharePoint will display the data as is, in this case, and URL. But we want a link, so here’s what we’re doing:

1. “elmType” is the element type or, in this case, a link. In HTML, a link is “a” (there’s an excellent reason for this, but it’s not essential for now)
2. “txtContent” is the text that the user will see. If you want something else than “Text” then replace it in the code above.
3. “Attributes” contain the details of the “element”. Since it’s a link, we need to provide a link destination represented as “href”. Since we have a URL in the field, we can use it as the destination, so we use the “@currentField.” This is a SharePoint nomenclature meaning that per row, SharePoint will apply the data for the current row.
4. “Target” means we’ll open a new window when clicking the link to avoid losing our place. If you want to open the same window, use “_self” instead of “_blank”.

That’s it. Not so hard, right?

I want a custom value for the URL

Ok, so the “Text” is not enough. That’s ok, let’s extend it. Since the column we have only supports one value, we need to create another column with the text we want for the link. If you have a column that has the value, that’s fine, so let’s change the code slightly to show the data.

{
  "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/sp/v2/column-formatting.schema.json",
  "elmType": "a",
  "txtContent": "[$URLDescription]",
  "attributes": {
    "target": "_self",
    "href": "=@currentField"
  }
}

Replace the “URLDescription” with the name of your column, and you’ll see this:

You can optionally hide it if it makes sense since you can find it in the form when you’re adding the data.

I want to hide the ones that are not URL

Ok, I see it above, and it’s pretty ugly, so let’s hide it. We need a more complex code but not a lot to do that. You only need to copy and paste it as before, so no worries about the complexity, ok?

{
  "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/sp/v2/column-formatting.schema.json",
  "elmType": "a",
  "txtContent": "=if(@currentField != '',[$URLDescription],'')",
  "attributes": {
    "target": "_self",
    "href": "=@currentField"
  }
}

Here’s what it looks like:

Don’t forget to replace the “URLDescription” with the column that you want to represent the title.

So what we’re doing? We’re telling SharePoint if the current field is empty, then don’t show anything; otherwise, display the contents of the “URLDescription” field. Super a simple change and with excellent results for your users.

Final thoughts

Although it’s a workaround, I think the result is close enough; it is similar to the “hyperlink” column style. I hope Microsoft extends this limitation and allows more than 255 characters, since they generate URLs like these, but if not, at least you have a solution to your problem.

Photo by Alexis Fauvet on Unsplash