>I need to add a field to a SQL Server table to store free-text notes. The note can be a brief one, just a few characters, or could be as long as two pages of text. I would like to be able to search the Notes field by a string/content using SQL Select. Will this be possible with TEXT type field?
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>The reason I am asking is that in a White Paper on conversion to SQL Server it says that TEXT type is searchable only if SQL full-text search ability is enabled. Is this capability difficult to enable? Do most companies using SQL Server have this capability enabled (that is, will I have problems to convince a customer in have to set this capability?).
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>And if I have to use VARCHAR, what length would you recommend to specify? This is fairly small table, I don't think it will be more than 10000 records so I am not concerned about the storage. But I want to learn to do it right, so that when I deal with a large table, I will apply the same rules.
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>Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

A LIKE of the type '%content%' it is not optimized however,
even if you use a VARCHAR.