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I got a new laptop at work, and I'm getting a SharePoint "filename too long" error when saving a file (e.g. from Word) or when trying to rename a file in Windows Explorer. I do not get the error when pasting a file into the same folder with the same name I tried to use.

The weird part is that this doesn't happen on my old laptop when doing the same tasks, and it doesn't happen to other users in my work group. We have very deep folder nesting, so I can't unilaterally go try to shorten all the file and folder names and screw up everyone else's links and filenames. Company IT didn't have an answer for me.

Is there a setting I can check on the new laptop to make it work like the old one?

Additional possibly relevant info:

  • I am logged in as the same user on the old and new laptop.

  • Company uses a user profile manager (RES) that's supposed to make a seamless transition to a new machine, but I had the light version of it, so mine was missing some programs etc. Not sure if all Windows settings transferred.

  • SharePoint file checkout is turned off. Basically they set up SharePoint to manage file ownership, then leadership had trouble editing files from ipads while traveling, so some enhanced SharePoint features were turned off, and now it's pretty much just a network drive that runs more slowly and throws errors more often. A few people might be using the browser interface, but most access is via Windows Explorer.

  • Workaround is to save the file to my local machine and paste it into SharePoint, but that's not acceptable to me long term. Also, I'm not sure whether file metadata could sometimes get messed up if I have to copy to local, rename, copy back to SharePoint instead of just renaming on SharePoint.

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  • That might be related to a 32bits version versus a 64bits. Check your version of Office and Windows.
    – AymKdn
    Commented Mar 15, 2018 at 2:41
  • Thanks for the idea. All users are on 64 bit in this case. I did figure it out, posting as an answer.
    – wiress
    Commented Mar 18, 2018 at 3:42

1 Answer 1

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Got through to a higher level of company IT who figured it out. The folder link in the favorites section of Windows Explorer on the new computer had a %20 instead of the space that was in the old link. This new favorites link had been created automatically by the RES profile manager, which copied it from the favorites on my old laptop but encoded the space into %20.

Apparently the %20 told SharePoint to enforce the filename length, but using a space does not. As soon as I corrected the link to match my old laptop, the problem was resolved.

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