wrap text in external list multiline text field

Hello,

I have an external list, where I need to have the standard text field converted to a multi-line text filed. I accomplished this with Infopath, but now I have 2 issues. First, I cannot get the text to wrap in a column or accept any style parameters like width or overflow: auto. If I enter data the list just gets stretched out miles wide on a single line. Secondly, the multiline text box will only allow 254 characters, even though the external database field is varchar(500). Any ideas? thanks.