I am working with a form and I would like to know why SQL Server 2000 will only accept varchar and up to 8000 characters when I need to have text. When I go to my form to view it and I have in the database text, it will not show text. If I switch back over to varchar it will show the information on the form. I would like to know how can this problem be solved when I need text as I have a large amount of text inside of varchar?

Thanks,

why SQL Server 2000 will only accept varchar and up to 8000 characters

from MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176089.aspx

varchar [ ( n | max ) ] Variable-length, non-Unicode character data. n can be a value from 1 through 8,000. max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^31-1 bytes. The storage size is the actual length of data entered + 2 bytes. The data entered can be 0 characters in length. The ISO synonyms for varchar are char varying or character varying.

This means that ms sql server 2000 have a maximum varchar length of 8000 characters.
No way to get higher than that with this datatype.

In sql server 2k5 and up, this limitation is lifted, via the "varchar(max)" syntax.
In sql server 2k, you have to use the "text" datatype, which can hold up to 2 Gb of data.
Both "varchar(max)" and "text" are identical in the result.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187993.aspx

text
Variable-length non-Unicode data in the code page of the server and with a maximum length of 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647) characters. When the server code page uses double-byte characters, the storage is still 2,147,483,647 bytes. Depending on the character string, the storage size may be less than 2,147,483,647 bytes.