What I noticed about using Chrome for CoRI reports is that it doesn't count down the characters in the narratives boxes. It does do that in Internet Explorer.
What works for me is to open a Word document and use it for keeping track of how many characters I've used. Once I have finished one narrative/comment, I delete it and input the next comment into the Word document. Once the report is finished, I do not need the document anymore.
In my case, I also keep a Word document of all my comments/narratives for all my shops in case my computer crashes while I am in the middle of doing a report. It has happened...