SMS Play Tasks have a character limit of 70 instead of 160

Overview

When trying to send an SMS text during a Play Task, you notice that when you copy and paste your message (for example, copying and pasting the message from the cue card on the current step), Playbooks will limit the characters to 70. However, if you type the same message, Playbooks allows you to use the full 160 characters.

Solution

The character limit of 70 applies when the text contains formatting or special characters. Plain-text messages will be limited to 160 characters because that is the standard limit for plain-text SMS messages (following the GSM-7 standard's basic character set). However, formatted SMS messages are limited to 70 characters.

There is no way to clear formatting within Playbooks.

As a workaround, you can use the Ctrl+Shift+V keys to paste the text without formatting or copy the desired text and paste it into a plain-text editor such as Notepad, then copy it again from there and paste the plain text into Playbooks. If you are using an editor such as Google Docs, you may click the "Clear formatting" button on the desired text.