File name “not valid or too long” when copying a file?

Question

I have a document library which contains some Word documents that I'm trying to copy down to my local disk. I've opened the document library using Windows Explorer, and am dragging the individual files from that window to a folder on my local PC.

Some files work, but others are giving me this error (on Windows 7 x64):

The file name you specified is not valid or too long. Specify a different file name.

The filename in question is simply "Donations Policy.docx" - it's not a long filename. I've even tried simply dropping the file into the root of my D drive to see if it's the destination filename it's complaining about, to no avail.

On Windows XP the error is a bit more cryptic:

Cannot copy Donations Policy: Cannot read from the source file or disk.

Has anyone seen this error? I can't for the life of me determine why some files are throwing this error while others are copying just fine.

UPDATE

The files copy without any problem if we go into the doc lib's settings and turn off versioning.

The error must somehow be related to versioning, but the versions of these documents are not consistent with the error. Documents with versions less than one (eg 0.6) copy fine, others with versions like 1.2 are fine. My "Donations Policy" file is version 1.8 and it errors.

So for now we're working around it by turning off versioning for the duration of the file copy. I'd still love to hear from others who might be able to explain the error!

Answer 1

I found that this renaming problem occurs based on how the drive was mapped. For example, renaming files does not work if I map the drive with this address:

https://mydomain.com:987/Shared%20Documents

However, if I map the drive the following way I am able to rename files:

\mydomain.com@ssl@987\Shared Documents\

This was only tested in Windows 7.

Answer 2

It may be a coincidence that the files with the higher version numbers are the ones giving the error.

Is the pattern that files with a space in the file name give an error, but files without a space are OK?

Answer 3

I'd look in the SharePoint log files for possible errors, it could be that a generic error code is coming back to the OS when something else is happening in the underlying sharepoint layer.

Answer 4

I'm going to provide my own "answer" to this question to effectively close it off, because the problem is no longer occurring and I'm not 100% sure what fixed it.

All I know is that (temporarily) disabling versioning on the document library made the problem go away. After we were done copying the files, we turned versioning back on and it still didn't error. So I think right now it's anybody's guess.

Answer 5

how deep down in your site/folder structure is the document located? Make sure that the Url to the site, doclib and folders and file are not longer than 256 characters.

Answer 6

Try renaming the file in the SharePoint UI then go back to Explorer view and retry.

Let me know how it goes.

PS. Are you an admin/SC admin? Do you have permissions to this item?

Answer 7

This problem is no longer a considered because it has been solved.There is a way to fix this problem and the name of that software is Long Path Tool. I highly recommend it to you since I have already used it.