Ideas for huge text area

Question

Our Document Control person catalogs documents in a form I've created. We are a spice manufacturer (ahhhh, but alas, I can't smell them anymore while here! )  In one text area on the form she lists associated items, for example PL-1234 is a pallet layout for all of our jars, so that text area for document PL-1234 might have eighty item numbers, each five or six chars listed in the field. In addition, there are verification sheets, assembly instructions, work instructions, all catalogued, and all with that associated items field holding many many many item numbers.  Production workers on the floor then will enter the item number that they are making for the day and a list of all the documents they need for producing the item will display in an interactive report, where they will then call up those they need (touch screens to boot!!).
I've never liked this solution but she wanted to be able to copy and paste into the list from another source [WARNING WARNING DATA CONSISTENCY NIGHTMARE!! - spaces, dashes, commas, yeah yeah, I know].  Recently, when we did a version upgrade, I realized I had truncated the field when I exported to Excel and the text area got chopped (thankfully less than ten and easily fixable), not at exactly 1024 chars, but something in that random neighborhood.  Before you fall off your chair laughing or roll your eyes at my naiveté-learn-as-I-go education, I'm looking for another way to handle this clump of data.
I have collections on the form, which was how I wanted to handle this a few years ago when I created it, then she'd have to enter those items manually, and the potential of inaccuracies is huge.  So I'm thinking I should just continue to let her enter those items in the same manner, then reformat it and plunk it into a table that joins to the document table.
I apologize for not having the jargon.  I hope this makes sense.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions you see fit.
Alexandra
Application Express 4.2.2.00.11
Edit 1
Not only the above, but in the interactive report, as far as I've always known, that associated items field must be visible on the interactive report with allllllllllllll those items listed for it to be searched by the production floor. Please advise.
Edit 2
Just an example of the bald spots on my head: 430922 42181 <- 42182 <- 42183 <- 42184 <- 42186 <- 42188 <- 42190 <- 42192 <- 42194 <-

Answer 1

4000 characters is the limit you should be seeing, not 1024 (unless that is the size of the column in your table)
There is a DB Parameter for 12c that should jump that up to 32k
If it really is a 4000 character limit, there is a plugin that can help out: - Dynamic Action Plugin - Enkitec CLOB Load
I can't advise you on the 1st edit.  not enough info (a 'sample' on apex.oracle.com would be nice)
For processing, you'll need to read a lot of fantastically written manuals:
use (??does apex have something)/UTL_URL  to change HTML code like "&lt;" into "<"
you may need to use DBMS_LOB and LOOP over the CLOB in 4000 byte chunks.
use REGEXP_REPLACE to add hair back to your head (ie convert commas and spaces to single tab, remove nonsense characters, etc.)
use APEX_UTIL.string_to_table() to convert the entries in a table-like format.
make sure that the above is reusable as you'll want to use it once for Validation and once for Processing
use FORALL to professionally bulk-insert the results into a child table
use LISTAGG in your SELECT statements to convert the Relational version of the data back into something that looks like what was entered.
use CREATE PACKAGE so you don't go insane in the future.  This is a lot of code to write.
use SQL Developer to actually develop the PL/SQL code
use a code repository like SVN so you can 'rollback' your new-and-imporved-but-buggy versions.
and, most importantly, use sufficient comments and APEX_DEBUG.MESSAGE() in your code so that future developers can pickup where you stopped.