Leslie Worley

Q: Why do I get error that filenames longer than 31 characters are unsupported?

I have read more than one post on this happening on Mavericks, yet I see nothing that indicates anything other than yep, it is an intermittent problem. To summarize:

When saving a file, or exporting to PDF, or printing to PDF, etc., the filesystem will sometimes throw an exception:

1. Error dialog presents: "Names longer than 31 characters are not supporred on the destination volumne."

2. If the filename is shortened, it is "accepted" yet no file is saved at the destination folder.

3. (In my observation) The previously used destination folder is not remembered for saving/exporting subsequent files. (This seems consistent with the files not actually being saved, despite shorter filenames.

 

This is very problematic, and  it has occurred numerous times. Disk Utility shows no problems with the hard disk (using Verify). Rebooting seems to clear it up (sometimes), but it is pretty silly for a Mac to require a reboot like that (that sounds like Windows).

 

Any help / response would be appreciated.

Posted on Feb 2, 2014 11:05 AM

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Q: Why do I get error that filenames longer than 31 characters are unsupported?

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  • by Leslie Worley,

    Leslie Worley Leslie Worley Feb 3, 2014 10:14 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 3, 2014 10:14 AM in response to Csound1

    Hi, Csound1. When you open "Printers & Scanners" in system prefs, if your printer has scan capability there with be both a Print and a Scan tab. Selecting Scan tab, there will be an Open Scanner button. What opens may indeed be vendor specific.

     

    That being said, this hasn't to do with using the printer or scanner. I added that as a second example. It is the system "Save As" function where this is happening. Using Mail (more often than scanning), I use" Print -> Save as PDF" or "Export as PDF" to make file copies of emails. These use the same system Save dialog.

     

    Sorry if the scan assistant example made anything muddy. :-)

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Feb 3, 2014 10:18 AM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 9 (51,151 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 3, 2014 10:18 AM in response to Leslie Worley

    So it happens when the print to pdf function is in use rather than the application Save As command, correct?

  • by Leslie Worley,

    Leslie Worley Leslie Worley Feb 3, 2014 10:28 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 3, 2014 10:28 AM in response to Csound1

    Correct. It happens when using "Print > Save as PDF..." or "Export as PDF..."

    (I do not know definitively if using "Save" or "Save As..." does this.)

  • by Jeff the Bakerman,

    Jeff the Bakerman Jeff the Bakerman Feb 4, 2014 8:35 AM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 4, 2014 8:35 AM in response to Leslie Worley

    I too have found this intermittently, on OS X 10.9.1. The only correlation I've found so far is that when it has happened for me, it's been when saving to a folder that's shared using AFP. I can't be sure that's it, but I wonder if it's hitting an old code path related to really old AFP filename limitations.

     

    I've had this issue come and go on the same shared folder (saving web archives from Safari) even without a reboot.

  • by patrick206,

    patrick206 patrick206 Feb 6, 2014 8:25 AM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 6, 2014 8:25 AM in response to Leslie Worley

    Hi,

    Can you try to export the file to a location anywhere insdie the home folder or Shared folder and report back if the error occurrs or if the file is saved ok?

  • by Leslie Worley,

    Leslie Worley Leslie Worley Feb 6, 2014 8:32 AM in response to patrick206
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 6, 2014 8:32 AM in response to patrick206

    Hi Patrick,

     

    Jeff mentions he encounters this issue when using a network file share using AFP. For myself, this has never been the case; when it occurs, it have always been when saving to a folder within in my home folder. So, I don't think this is specific to network drives. Again, once it occurs, it seems any operation of this type fails. UNTIL and UNLESS it decides to resolve itself (as both Jeff and myself have sometimes observed).

     

    At the moment, it seems to be functioning normally, so I cannot really try any suggestions to help diagnose. :-/ Though I really do appreciate everyone trying to help with this!

    - Les

  • by BabaKaAshirwaad,

    BabaKaAshirwaad BabaKaAshirwaad Feb 16, 2014 10:44 PM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Feb 16, 2014 10:44 PM in response to Leslie Worley

    I've started encountering this issue since I updated to Mavericks. Any solution identified yet?

     

    I see the error message when I try to save a pdf (having name larger than 31 characters) on my HD.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Feb 17, 2014 2:14 AM in response to BabaKaAshirwaad
    Level 9 (51,151 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 17, 2014 2:14 AM in response to BabaKaAshirwaad

    Unless you post the filename how can we know what (if anything) is illegal about it.

     

    Or should I just take an uninformed guess.

     

    Start your own thread, then you can have your own attention.

  • by BabaKaAshirwaad,

    BabaKaAshirwaad BabaKaAshirwaad Feb 17, 2014 2:28 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Feb 17, 2014 2:28 AM in response to Csound1


    Csound1 wrote:

     

    Unless you post the filename how can we know what (if anything) is illegal about it.

     

    Or should I just take an uninformed guess.

     

    Start your own thread, then you can have your own attention.

     

    If you shed a little of your arrogance, you'll realize that I wrote - "filename larger than 31 chars" are not being accepted. I did comm+P on the below web page and the filename was imported from the article title which is greater than 31 characters.

     

    http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/19/world/meast/syria-geneva-talks

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Feb 17, 2014 2:38 AM in response to BabaKaAshirwaad
    Level 9 (51,151 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 17, 2014 2:38 AM in response to BabaKaAshirwaad

    So don't provide the information, it's your choice to solicit guesses.  in the thread you are trying to hijack. And if it is not important enough for you to create your own thread it's not important enough for me to take a guess.

     

    Good luck and goodbye.

  • by BabaKaAshirwaad,

    BabaKaAshirwaad BabaKaAshirwaad Feb 17, 2014 2:44 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Feb 17, 2014 2:44 AM in response to Csound1

    I did provide the link and explained the steps to see the error (i.e. to save the above article in my disk). The issue gets resolved when I restart my mac but reappears after some time.

     

    P.S. I did not create a new thread on this since the issue was already listed. Just wanted to highlight that it is being faced by multiple users.

  • by WeeLB,

    WeeLB WeeLB Feb 27, 2014 11:39 AM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 11:39 AM in response to Leslie Worley

    Just to add data to Leslie's post:


    - I intermittently experience this error when manipulating PDFs. I frequently cannot save PDF attachments from Mail, and instead have to browse to the folder and manually copy the attachment through the file system.

    - I have had trouble exporting PDFs from Pages (newest version).

    - Files are being saved within my home directory. I have encountered this error only through Mail and Pages, and never on file system copy or move operations, even when dealing with the same folders.

    - My HDD is not showing errors and is HFS+ Journaled and Encrypted.

    - Never had this problem before Mavericks.

     

     

    So to summarize my experience, this is not a HDD issue; it is a problem in Mail and Pages, if not other programs; it is limited to Mavericks; it only affects PDFs; and it is not a network volume error.

  • by Scoot_Mulner,

    Scoot_Mulner Scoot_Mulner Mar 24, 2014 7:39 AM in response to WeeLB
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 24, 2014 7:39 AM in response to WeeLB

    I have ran into this problem as well. I am running Mavericks 10.9.2 and Mail 7.2 (1874).

     

    When I try to save a pdf attachment from an e-mail, it shows me the same error (31 character limit). I have tried saving the file to other locations, as was suggested earlier in the thread, on the internal hard drive (Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)) but I keep getting the same message. I tried "/" and "/System" with no luck. I have also tried creating a new folder from the "Save Attachment..." dialog but an error pops up telling me that this location is write protected. "ls -l" shows me that I am the owner of the folder and that I do have write permissions (rwx). I confirmed this by using "touch" to create a dummy file in both locations and I was also able to create new folders in both locations from the command line.

     

    The documents I am trying to save have private titles but there are no illegal characters in them. The file names have upper and lower case letters, numbers and an underscore. No spaces are in the file name. The extension is .pdf

     

    I'll go reboot now so I can save the files I need

  • by JZGTilt,

    JZGTilt JZGTilt Mar 25, 2014 7:01 PM in response to Scoot_Mulner
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 25, 2014 7:01 PM in response to Scoot_Mulner

    Yep, I have the same problem when trying to save email messages as text files. I am encountering the same error with the 31 character limit, and then if using a short file name I get a 'Could not save to path' message.

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Mar 26, 2014 8:32 AM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 6 (9,379 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Mar 26, 2014 8:32 AM in response to Leslie Worley

    There are certain characters which are illegal in Mac files names, there are others which are best avoided. Older software could be using older programming interfaces which have the 31 character limit but certainly Apple Mail, and Apple's own built-in print to PDF option should be using the latest programming APIs and not have this limit.

     

    These older programs not only had a filename limit, but also an entire filepath limit, i.e. the length of all the folder names as well as the file name added together.

     

    I can remember when Microsoft Office for Mac suffered this limit you could find a file in the Finder, double-click to open it which would work, but when you tried to save it Word or Excel would complain because the filepath was too long. A workaround was to save it say to the users desktop and then drag it in to the folder that was a sub-folder of a sub-folder of a sub-folder i.e. a long filepath.

     

    Another historical problem was when Macs running very old software tried to access a more modern Mac server and the older Mac would force a translation to a shorter name. This could happen with Windows client to a Mac server as well.

     

    With regards to the question by CSound1 if you did list an example file name and perhaps ideally also the full entire file path with all folder names, we can see if any potentially problematic characters are included.

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