title: Geting first 255 chars of ntext field using LINQ to Entities?
body: <p>I am using LINQ to ENTITIES to pull data from a SQL Server and I am trying to get just the first 255 characters from one of the columns who's data type is <code>NTEXT</code>. When I try I get the error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Argument data type ntext is invalid for argument 1 of len function</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>The code producing the error is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Subject = (yt.Message.Length &gt; 255) ?  yt.Message.Substring(0, 255) :  yt.Message
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there an easy way to either get the length so I can check it or just get the first 255 characters of an <code>NTEXT</code> column?</p>
  
  <p>Trying to do <code>yt.Message.ToString().Length</code> gives the same error.</p>
  
  <p>This is a third party DB for a forum software I am using and since I don't know anything about how that system works I want to stay away from altering any of the schema.</p>