Budbeth,
Thanks for the "can grow" tip; I'll use it elsewhere. In this case, I've got plenty of space for characters, but the special field isn't passing all of them to the report.
Synapsevampire,
I quickly counted 244 characters, including end-of-line returns. The field name that should print next would exceed 254. I'm using CR 8.5; how painful is upgrading to 9.0 or whatever's next?
I tried to place this special field in a Crystal Text Object but I guess I don't understand how that would work. I want my Record Selection Formula to print in my report footer as I make additions/changes in the Formula. Thanks.