Ever had a scenario where you were putting a product name or some other kind of dynamic content into a subject line, and you wanted to only show the first X words or characters? Or featuring article content in an email and wanted to include a short blurb with the first X words as a preview?

Let's look at how to limit characters (easy with limitations) and whole words (more involved but better control and end user experience).

By Characters: Substring()

The first and easiest solution is to use the Substring() function, which allows you to designate a starting position and a number of characters to show. For example, this would create a new @preview_text variable with the first (starting from position 1) 100 characters in a longer @full_length_text variable.

set @preview_text = Substring(@full_length_text,1,100)

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This is a really powerful function when you know exactly what character position you want to start and how many characters you want.…