Crash Narrative Cut Off on Printed Report

The limit on a crash narrative is approximately 3950 characters, including spaces.

If the officer goes over this limit, a warning will pop up telling them to consider splitting it onto another narrative group.   This warning comes up multiple times while the officer is working on the crash.

If the officer ignores the warnings and does not split the narrative, it will be cut off on the printed copy of the crash.   This will be a problem if someone requests a copy of the report from the agency or from FLHSMV.

How to Split the Narrative

If the crash has not been submitted to HSMV follow these steps -

Consider copying and pasting your entire narrative into Notepad or Word so you have a copy of the original.

If you have a lot blank lines between your paragraphs, removing them might be enough to fit the narrative onto one page.   If you remove the extra lines and still get the error, then you need to copy part of your narrative to a new page.

On the crash form, below the narrative, press Click Here to Add Another Narrative Page.

Cut and paste part of the original narrative to the new page.   If you still get the warning, your original narrative is still too long.   Keep trying until you no longer get the warning.

Do a print preview of the Official HSMV Copy of the crash to verify that your entire narrative is there.

If the narrative is cut off on a crash that is already in Submitted status, the officer should complete a Crash Update and follow the steps above.