Whats the deal with spaces in attachment file names in SharePoint 2007?

Question

I have a list, with a list item that contains an attachment. I was horrified to see that the link to the attachment doesn't work if the attachment file name contains a space.

I'm amazed that SharePoint will even allow you to store file names with spaces, if it doesn't know how to handle them correctly.

Is there some kind of server setting that you can set to "Handle attachment file name spaces" correctly? Or is this a known limitation with Sharepoint? If yes, please tell me this issue is fixed in 2010?

Update

I've narrowed it down to " +" in the filename a space directly followed by a + sign. Space alone works fine.

Answer 1

I'm surprised that you were able to get file names containing + signs into SharePoint as they are on the list of characters that SP just doesn't like. Here's a link to a blog post by Joel Oleson on the subject that lays out just about anything you'd want to know about filenames, folder names and SharePoint 2007.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/06/27/file-name-length-size-and-invalid-character-restrictions-and-recommendations.aspx

Answer 2

I've also found that some outside emails that come into an internal address with no body or signature will not grab the attachment.

Answer 3

There is a known issue with Sharepoint and spaces in file names. Spaces become %20. Files with spaces are 250 characters or longer and eventually your sharepoint site will fill up and become unusable. You need to ensure that file names do not contain spaces, ie replace with underscores or dashes or run the name together removing all spaces.