The change is introduced in WooCommerce Admin 3.0 and WooCommerce 6.1. As it stated in the post dedicated to this limitation, “The goal of imposing a character limit is to streamline notes’ contents and improve user experience.”

The limitation takes into account only the symbols that will be displayed. So if you’re using any HTML tags with additional attributes, the counter will calculate only the number of visible characters.

So, for example, you’d like to enter some hyperlinks and write the code:

Learn more <a href="https://example.com/docs">here.</a>

This will be displayed as:

Learn more here.

and counted as 16 symbols (including whitespace and period) even though actual code in HTML requires much more.

The changes will mainly affect the merchants who are using Inbox notes for communication with the users. WooCommerce Admin 2.9 and WooCommerce 6.0 have a special tool that checks the notes and shows a console warning message to notify you about the notes that will be affected. However, if you’re using an earlier version of the software, you’ll need to check the notes manually or use different tools such as office text processors or online services.

Also, the change may be inconvenient for users working with multilanguage setups since the merchant will need to check that all the translations fit under the limitation.