# 7.9 to 8.0 upgrade, strings in UDT went to null

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/7-9-to-8-0-upgrade-strings-in-udt-went-to-null/23996>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [April 10, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/7-9-to-8-0-upgrade-strings-in-udt-went-to-null/23996 "2019-04-10T13:34:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cajaz](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/cajaz/32/3631_2.png) [@cajaz](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/cajaz)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/7-9-to-8-0-upgrade-strings-in-udt-went-to-null/23996/1 "2019-04-10T13:34:50Z")

</div>

In Ignition 7.9, I have a datatype within a datatype (inception…), and in that inner datatype for each attribute 1 2 and 3 I have name, prescribed value, and units. In ignition 7.9 it displays like this on my interface screen:  
 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/e/ec68031bb284cd1ce69654ef79352dcaba301cd0.png)  
This shows some data for attribute 1, but attributes 2 and 3 properties are all empty strings (length 0).

When I upgraded the project to 8, all those string values are displayed as null:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/9/9e0bcc46e8f3e34b34a39f71c5b3017280af1c41.png)  
As you can see, the first null for attribute 2 is missing. This is because I went to the tag browser for that tag, double clicked in the value field and then clicked out of the value field without pressing anything on the keyboard. Now it’s a string of length 0. Also, when I create a new parent datatype independent of the tags from the import, the string tags initialize to null. I noticed this behavior before when we were on ignition 7.8.3, and it went away when I went to 7.9.10. Now it’s back in 8.0. How do I deal with this? I’d prefer not to have to initialize every tag in the datatype, it’s a very large list of tags and scripting that would be a pain in the bum.  
 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/e/e1cb13263dcab9f21a7bf045695a83be09ce8873.png)