MS Word Filename

[ibredbeard]

There is a MS Word document that is many folders deep. Including spaces, slashes, etc and the filename itself, the total character count is 250 characters. I can open this file in Word 2003. Another co-worker, who is also running Windows XP and Word 2003, cannot open it unless I shorten the filename so the total character count is 240 or less. Why is that? Why can some people open this file and she can't? How do I fix this? Thanks in advance!!

 

[poetstrm]

OK this is a long shot here and if anyoe finds a simpler explanation, by all means.
I found this on a website when I was researching your question
"The maximum filename length on a NTFS partition is 256 characters"
That would be why you can open it. I would have to assume then that when the file is transferred to your coworkers computer, more lettters are added to the filename then before, forcing you to shorten yours to accomodate for the extra ones her system is going to add. SOmetimes XP will insert things like "copy of" before a filename if you cut and paste the document into a directory twice. See if you can look at the file on her computer. She may be copying it or transferring it wrong. Hope that helps, thats a really strange problem!

Laura

 

[ibredbeard]

Strange indeed. I supposed it would be also be helpful to include the fact the the file is on a shared network drive. The computer that hosts this shared drive is a Windows 2000 advanced server. I even tried a new file. I had a file that both of us could open, copied it to the folder that the other file(teh one she cannot open) was located in, and tried opening it. I can, but she cannot until I shorten the name to 240 characters or less. Thanks for help!