Alter Field Type

[Anon]

I am trying to change a field type from varchar to text via PHP. I am using the following:
$sql = ALTER TABLE tablename CHANGE description description TEXT DEFAULT NULL

But it does not work. Can someone help. Thanks

[[deleted]]

"But it does not work"

...and the error you got is?

Most likely you are using the 'desctiption' column in an index, and when you use a BLOB field like 'TEXT' in an index, you have to specify a length; how many characters from the text should be used in the index. (don't use all characters, or you might as well not use an index)

[gmoody]

I receive a parse error. The description file is not in an index, and I have also tried limiting the characters. Still I get the same error

[[deleted]]

and what is the parse error exactly?