Enable long file path for OneDrive for Business
My 1GB of storage part of my Office 365 Business subscription is more or less useless because I get the "File name too long" issue with most of my files.
The following request is now closed as completed but I have voted on it with OneDrive for Business in mind (and I'm sure a lot of other other users did!).
https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/6325774-enable-long-file-paths-aka-file-name-too-long-p
So, OneDrive for Business users, make your voice heard and vote for this!
Francois Dumas
shared this idea
You can now use much longer paths with OneDrive for Business and Team sites! You can read more about it here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/New-support-for-and-in-SharePoint-Online-and-OneDrive-for/ba-p/60357. Thanks for the feedback!
132 comments
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Robert Burgett
commented
Like the research institute mentioned in the 2019-03-03 comment, my engineering group works with "deep nested folder systems and long descriptive filenames." It's been that way since Windows 95 made it possible. While we improved the nesting depth measurably while porting to OneDrive, it's still deep enough to run into this limitation regularly.
Certainly Admin's response of 2017-05-08 is true in that allowable path lengths became somewhat longer at that time. However, the ordinary user's intuition is that OneDrive's operation should be nearly transparent. That is, if double-clicking a file that's not in a OneDrive folder opens that file, then the same file should also open from within a OneDrive folder, assuming the same apparent path length is shown in Explorer. Instead, Excel or Word informs me that the file can't be opened or can't be found.
I realize OneDrive behaves this way because it's actually opening the file using the web address, that this unseen web address is way longer than the path shown in Explorer yet has different limitations on its own length, that the underlying SharePoint filesystem was originally designed to group files by intersecting keywords rather than deep folder nesting, etc., etc. I get all that. But none of it changes the fact that this limitation is adversely affecting my workflow.
This limitation and the workarounds I have to come up with in order to get my job done are extremely frustrating, especially because I really like the attractive features of O365, particularly the ability to allow multiple users simultaneous live access to the same document. But how do I talk my fellow coworkers into embracing the very real advantages of OneDrive and O365 when they run smack into this equally real brick wall?
C'mon, ladies and germs. You're Microsoft. You made long filenames in Windows possible in the first place. Your Office suite improved productivity so effectively that you brought Lotus and WordPerfect to their knees. You have a home advantage that's made your competitors nervous for decades. Of all the cloud providers on the market today, surely you can do away with this issue that causes so many of your customers to throw up their hands and entrust their data to other companies' servers. Do it already.
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Rob Nicholson
commented
Yes, it's clearly "Not done". A client reported they were unable to open a document from a synchronised OneDrive folder using File Explorer. But then could open it from the web browser directly into Word. So it's clearly File Explorer that's at fault here. I've battled with MAXPATH for years but don't understand why it's still present. Microsoft controls Windows 10, File Explorer and Office
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Jonathan
commented
Yes, this is needed sorely!
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Anonymous
commented
Our research institute just this week rolled out Office 365 and OneDrive Business for every staff member - more than 700. We will be dumping it immediately. Scientists often work with deep nested folder systems and long descriptive filenames. This renders OneDrive completely useless as a solution for most scientific purposes. I am quite shocked at how useless it is, and how long they have left this problem unsolved. Poor show.
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Corey Bryant
commented
Yeah, MS needs to get their tools working correctly. I'm about to dump Office365 for the entire orginazation. I'm hearing the same from IT pros in my groups.
At this point, OneDrive, which we jumped to 365 for in the first place, is useless. The latest is this long file name ****. I'm reduced to wasting my time renaming files that aren't even close to the limit, and now I've come down to files that are 2-3 characters long, such as 123.jpeg and it says that is too long.
What a joke.
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Robert Slater
commented
This is ridiculous, MS. Your cloud storage competitors provide better long file path support for _your_ Windows operating systems than you do. It's pretty simple-- any cloud file storage solution you offer must absolutely support the longest path lengths and possible characters/file names/extensions that your currently supported operating systems do. Anything less is an embarrassing failure on Microsoft's part. I used to expect better of you, MS. More and more often though, I'm coming to realize that your company's current MO seems to be, "Do as little as possible, and claim it's all anyone wanted."
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Tim Miller
commented
Hi there, Nice answer! Or You could also try using LongPathTool program :-)
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Madness Gamer
commented
I would like to suggest you, try LongPathTool program to resolve this issue.
This tool is very helpful to resolve the issue. -
Anonymous
commented
This is not even close to fixed:
That's with long paths enabled in Windows 10. The only thing worse than it not working is having Microsoft pretend / claim it's working because we trust / rely on the information.
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Bill
commented
This solution does not solve the issue that many people have. I have a client that can't use One Drive's storage at all with his Office 365 because of long path names.
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Anonymous
commented
I deleted a folder that the path was too long but it still recognises it and wont open one drive
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Saravanan Ramasamy
commented
It's 29-May-2018. I still have the path length issue with the OneDrive for Business. The 1TB space they provided in the OneDrive for Business is a waste because 95% of my files didn't sync due to the long path length.
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Joe
commented
I still have the issue...05May2018
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Michael
commented
Seriously, what is wrong with you Microsoft? How have you not yet responded to this. How do you never respond appropriately to any issue faced by users ever? Why do I always have to trawl non-Microsoft forums to find useful answers? Business is business, and sometimes that means very long file paths and file names. Absolutely ridiculous to suggest we reduce our file paths and/or names. It is now May 2018, with this post originally created in May 2016.... I Just have no idea where your heads are at. Absolutely dumbfounded.
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Massimiliano Montelatici
commented
BOOOOM! NOT AT ALL: I have the same problem today April 9 2018.
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Charles
commented
Jason Moore : the link I followed had how to use # and % in file names but I didn't see anything about long file names
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Anonymous
commented
Long path tool will be best suitable for solving this issue !!!
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Anonymous
commented
completely unhelpful article Jason
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Tim Adams
commented
You can as well use Long Path Tool which will solve all your problems with OneDrive.
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Prakash Chordia
commented
How to see the full file names in Onedrive. It is so difficult to use OneDrive as quite often a large number of files have the same beginning I.e. USA Trip .....or same or similar ending I.e. .....Nov 2017. It makes it impossible to find the file you are looking for. It is very strange the Microsoft is dead sleep on this serious problem but which could be very easily fixed.
