alter command issue....

[phunkodelic]

I have a column named eventlog in table tblevents that is type "text". I want to change it to type "varchar(256)"

Here is what I did:

alter table tblevents modify eventlog VARCHAR(256)

Here is what I got:

+---------+------+------------------------------------------------+
| Level | Code | Message |
+---------+------+------------------------------------------------+
| Warning | 1246 | Converting column 'eventlog' from CHAR to TEXT |
+---------+------+------------------------------------------------+

Why? and more importantly how do you trouble shoot problems like this?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!