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Understanding long folder and file names in Windows

Did you know that there is a limit to how long a file name can be? Did you know that the character limit also includes the folder name? And what about the Path? Let's take a look at the long folder and file names in Windows.

Understanding long folder and file names in Windows

I recently recovered files from several Windows computers for a client. He asked that I put them onto an external drive for storage. But I ran into a problem, file names that were too long.

Now allot of people think that the maximum length for the name of a File in Windows is 255 characters. But that is not correct. Technically, Folders are also a File but with a unique attribute designating it as a Folder.

And Folder and Sub-Folder names are also included in the full name of the File. So, the File's actual name consists of the Folder and Sub-Folder name(s) as well. All of these names factor into the 255 character limit.

So, when you include the names of the Folder, Sub-Folder(s), and File together, it is called a Path. A Path is a string of Folder, Sub-Folder, File, backslashes, and sometimes a volume name (drive letter).

The Path to a Folder or File on your computer will contain a drive letter (C:\, D:\, etc.) at the beginning. A Path to a network Folder and File will contain just two (2) backslashes (\\) at the beginning. And a Path can be up to 260 characters in length.

For example, let's say you have a file named 'My Text File.txt' in a Sub-Folder of your Documents Folder called 'Simply Text Files'. The complete Path for it would be:

C:\Users\username\Documents\Simply Text Files\My Text File.txt

The name of the File itself is only 16 characters, but with the name of the Folder and Sub-Folders included, it is 59 characters. And the complete Path is 62 characters. And yes, spaces do count as characters.

So, getting a long name error does not necessarily mean the actual name of the File is too long; it just means the length of the names of the Folder, Sub-Folder(s), and File altogether is. The simplest solution is to shrink the Folder or Sub-Folder(s) name(s) and leave the actual File name alone.

Now in my case, I was dealing with a couple of thousand File names that were too long. And I could not determine where all of the Files were on the drives. So, I went looking online for a program that could help me with this issue.

What I found was a neat little program called TLPD (Too Long Path Detector).
Too Long Path Detector folder selection screen
It showed me where all of the long file names were. And lucky for me, they were grouped in Folders and Sub-Folders with reasonably long names.

So, using the output from TLPD,
Too Long Path Detector text file output
I started shortening the Folder and Sub-Folder names. I kept running TLPD until I had all of the Paths down to under 225 characters. It was then I was able to copy all of the Files to an external drive for storage.

Comments (1) -

jack reacher

good article

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