External Identifier - too short

[frank]

Dear All,
I have imported my contacts into CiviCRM with an external identifier from SugarCRM. Since the external ID was too long (36 characters), I increase the length of the external_identifier in the database to 64 characters. The import worked great, but now I have the problem, whenever I want to edit the contacts and save the changes, CiviCRM tells me: "External ID: Please enter no more than 32 characters."
How can I solve that problem?
Best,
Frank

[xavier]

I would suggest you to stop changing the structure of the database by hand and create a custom field "sugarID" with the proper length.

Have you developed custom scripts to ease the migration or did you do a regular import?

[frank]

I did a regular import. Is there an easy way to enlarge the external id field.

[frank]

Is there an easy way to transfer the data from external ID field to the custom field SugarID?

[Donald Lobo]

two options:

1. decrease the length of your sugar's external id field

2. u'll need to modify the civicrm contact form (maybe via the buildform hook and overwrite the external id field and rules) and extend the length of the field

3.for your last question, u can potentially do it via a sql query and populate the custom field that way

lobo