I need to monitor (in Local or in Watch) a varchar(max) field where the value length is approximately 500 characters. But when I try to view or copy/paste the value, only the first 255 characters are there. How can I change this limit so I can view the entire value instead of only part of it? I even tried debugging in VS2019, but I still experience this same value length limit. (I can use either VS or SSMS 2012).
If you want to view the entire length of the varchar(max) Watch/local variable, you can also right click the value and select Copy Value
(not Copy) and paste them into notepad file. You will see the entire length of your variable.
But i think the best way to view the entire length of the variable is to use view
icon to view them in different formats.
UPDATE
If you want to use SSMS2012 only for debugging SPs, i suggest you to debug it in Visual Studio instead.
Right click your database projcet->Add->Stored Procedure
Press the drop-down arrow on the green arrow button in the Transact-SQL editor toolbar and select Execute with Debugger to execute the query with debugging on.
For more information, please refer to :