Hello friends.
I’m trying to understand if this is an existing unresolved issue.
Upon opening a new file, i wrote alot of content in the “Title” part which is actually ultimately the .md filename, after finishing, the note simply disappeared.
If this is some untreated bug, then ill need to get used to avoiding typing too much content in the title section. But is there any way of recovering my data?
Thanks in advance.
So I tested this and was able to duplicate it. I had a guess from back in my attempts at college in Computer Science that this was a limitation because of the filesystems being used.’
I made a test note with almost 3000 characters as the title and got this:
The title then got reverted to Untitled. I cut the amount of characters in half and same issue. I repeated this until I got down close to 256 characters. Sure enough, at exactly 252 characters I was able to save the title. Anything larger than that the text got deleted and the title reverted to Untitled.
So if you want a really detailed analysis of the issue see here.
But the TL;DR is the hard drive that your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) is formatted in a filesystem that it was programed to support. No matter what operating system is used, they all have a limitation of 255 bytes, which is equal to roughly 255 characters.
This is only an issue with Obsidian because it uses the title as the filename. Other notes applications use a database or something else depending on the app. The only way Obsidian would be able to “fix” the issue is by changing how they organize or name the files.
What you could do if you still want to have that long of a title is copy everything before you hit enter. If it’s too large it’ll then be on your clipboard and you’d be able to paste it in Notepad or some other text editor temporarily. It’s not an elegant solution, but unless one of the devs chimes in and tells me I’m wrong – I don’t think there is really any other solution.
thanks for taking the time to duplicate the problem. now considering that this limitation is unresolvable as it relates to the foundations of obsidian’s filesystem. How can we suggest fixes, which could atleast be a warning when you hit 255chars , either it lets you continue writing, or it gives a wall effect limiting the writing. that is, instead of the current case when data is lost. or they could atleast convert the data written as a title, to normal text in the note.
This needs to be resolved, before i downloaded Obsidian i read alot of computer science students praising it, but if an app can lose your data this easily, and this issue hasn’t been resolved until now, it potentially breaks my trust in a way that for me is a source of anxiety. I have some internal defect that i respond very harshly to losing data. This shouldn’t be happening.
The same loss (of typed text) would happen in your operating system’s file browser.
Things typed aren’t data until they’re saved, and you’re entering it in a way it can’t be saved.
Maybe the Obsidian team would add something to handle your situation, but now that you know you’re typing a file name, why not just type your long text in the note content or in a property?
I think there are plugins and workarounds for displaying arbitrary text in place of the “Inline title” at the top of the note.
