Here's a funny hack. Knowing that XML data doesn't have the limitation, I ran this query on a non-XML column [Note: can't get this to appear right--there's a CDATA node inside the x tag, and concatenated inside the CDATA is your column]: SELECT CONVERT(xml, '') AS DataXML FROM MyTable. It spit everything out despite the length exceeding the max for a string. Just have to strip off the containing XML tag, and you've got your string.