echoing longtext from mysql

Ravenous

So I've got a field in my table of type 'longtext'. When I try to pull it out of the table and store it into a variable in my script, I get nothing. I try to echo it into a textarea so my users can edit the contents (same deal as editting your posts here at PHPBuilder), but there's nothing there. Am I missing something important?

DeltaRho2K

Post the applicable code and table structure...

planetsim

Firstly show some code like DeltaRho2K suggeted

Secondly there could be a number of reasons

1) No text etc in the feild
2) Data being fetched from query is wrong to the variable being echoed out
3) make sure in your textarea bit you have it like this

//example
<textarea name="message" cols="30" rows="30"><?php echo $var; ?></textarea>

//OR
<textarea name=\"message\" cols=\"30\" rows=\"30\">".$var."</textarea>