Text Box Component
Camila Escobar · June 17, 2026
The Text Box is the default input, and the only decision worth thinking about is which column it writes to. Bind it to a Short Text column and you get 255 characters; bind it to a Long Text column and you get room for a paragraph.
Use it for names, titles, codes, references and short free text — anything where the answer is one line and you will read it rather than filter by it.
Settings
Setting | Effect |
Label | The question shown above the field |
Placeholder | Grey example text inside the field, replaced as soon as someone types |
Required | The form will not submit while the field is empty |
Max length | Caps how much can be typed |
A placeholder is not a label. It disappears the moment someone types, so anything the person needs to remember while filling the field belongs in the label or the description, not the placeholder.
The trap
The column decides the real limit, not the component. A Text Box bound to a Short Text column will reject anything past 255 characters when it reaches the table, whatever you set as max length in the form. If people are writing paragraphs into it, the fix is to change the column to Long Text before the first submission — a Short Text column that already holds data cannot be widened if it is the table's key column.
When to use something else
The answer is an email or a phone number — those types validate; Text Box does not.
The answer is one of a fixed set of options — use a State component so the values stay consistent.
The answer is a list of short labels you will filter by — use Tags.
Next
Praxsuite Forms: Components Overview
Phone Component
Tag Component in Forms
Datatypes in Praxsuite
How to Create a Form