How do you view ALL text from an ntext or nvarchar(max) in SSMS?

In newer versions of SSMS it can be configured in the **(Query/Query Options/Results/Grid/Maximum Characters Retrieved)** menu:

[![enter image description here][1]][1]


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## Old versions of SSMS

[Options (Query Results/SQL Server/Results to Grid Page)][2]

>>To change the options for the current queries, click Query Options on the Query menu, or right-click in the SQL Server Query window and select Query Options.

...

>> **Maximum Characters Retrieved**
>> Enter a number from 1 through 65535 to specify the maximum number of characters that will be displayed in each cell.

Maximum is, as you see, 64k. The default is much smaller.

BTW [Results to Text][3] has even more drastic limitation:

>> **Maximum number of characters displayed in each column**
>> This value defaults to 256. Increase this value to display larger result sets without truncation. The maximum value is 8,192.


[1]:

[2]:

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[3]:

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Use the Visual Studio Code SQL Server Plugin. It is useful for JSON.

- Microsoft Documentation: [SQL Server extension for Visual Studio Code][1]
- Extension: [SQL Server (mssql)][2]


[1]:

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[2]:

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