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DeepFilip's avatar
DeepFilip
New member | Level 2
7 years ago
Solved

You can't copy the item because its name is too long er includes characters that are invalid on the.

Hi, I have a Dropbox account with 2TB of which 6% is full right now. I am trying to copy a folder that only has a couple of GBs and I am getting this error message. What is wrong with the filename "...
desktop
Error Messages
Mac
sync
  • Jane's avatar
    Jane
    7 years ago
    Hey there (DeepFilip), thanks for keeping the thread updated with the progress & apologies for getting back in touch with you with a slight delay. While this has been discussed here previously, I’d happily explain in a bit more depth under this conversation for posterity.
     
    It would be worth noting that there are files that your applications can't process correctly because they have file paths that are too long.
     
    This behavior is present if there are more than 255 characters in the entire file path. This means from the C:\ all the way to the extension of a file.
     
    As an example if you had a test.txt file in your Dropbox that had the following path:
     
    C:\Users\YourName\My Documents\Dropbox\test.txt
     
    This file would have a path that is 47 characters long.
     
    The Dropbox desktop application can read and write to locations that are longer than 255 characters, which means that files will sync to and from those locations, however, the applications used to open or save said files (e.g. Word, Notepad, Excel, &c.) might not support reading from or writing to these locations with long file paths and may show error messages when trying to open, save or edit them.
     
    Hopefully my message addresses your initial inquiry, however please feel free to check back with us here if you have any additional questions or thoughts! 
Jane's avatar
Jane
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
7 years ago
Hey AngelinaD, the filepath should count from your C:\ drive onwards. As you mentioned that you’ve been able to open these files normally at a certain point, it makes me wonder if you’ve moved these files across directories. 
 
From what I gather from your description, I’d suspect an underlying syncing issue Lina; if it’s not too much trouble for you, can you confirm that this isn’t attributed to a missing desktop app update? Have you by any chance tried unlinking & relinking your account on your desktop once as a quick fix, since it recreates the local database? If you haven’t done so alreday, please do so whenever you find some spare time. Once you relink, you can refer to your overlay icons on your device to determine whether your files are syncing correctly :arrows_counterclockwise:/:white_check_mark:. From there, you can quickly upload a test file from you desktop & see if it's updating on our website?
 
Please do let us know how you get on with these steps on this discussion & we’ll do our best to check back with you. Thanks! 
ldundercover's avatar
ldundercover
New member | Level 2
7 years ago

I had this problem, it happened after I upgraded to my OS to mojave and realized I needed to reinstalled the desktop app/ update dropbox.  I had to copy files from my back up that didnt get synced that were recently added to local on my desktop dropbox. The files wouldnt copy becuase of the name character error (some which were very short actually) and already existed on my dropbox- I was needing to replace large folders

The work around was that I copied the files local then uploaded the folder via online rather then drag onto the desktop, but not super ideal for folders with very large files depending on internet connection.

 

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