phranque - 9:04 am on Oct 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_substring

SUBSTRING(str,pos,len) (returns) a substring len characters long from string str, starting at position pos


SELECT SUBSTRING(`mytextareacolumn`,0,200) AS `mytextarea200` FROM `my_table` WHERE `user_id` = [user_id]