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

I have seen this problem saving files where none of the directories (or filenames) have leading spaces.

While your experience was that changing the "space" changes the result, I am seeing the problem without having leading space in file or directory names, and tried to change other aspects of the filename did not solve the problem.

i have found a way to solve this problem, that is try to chang the folder name which you cann't save the files location.

it looks like easy, have a fun!

This works in Yosemite too 10.10.2 I only had to use that workaround one time, and the system then apparently corrected itself, allowing me to 'print to pdf' from Firefox with a very long name. Thanks!

Thanks Oregon Ducky - it worked for me.

I just moved the hidden drives as you suggested and straight away - a cure!

All fixed.

I'm travelling to Oregon (from London UK) later this year. I hope everybody in Oregon is as helpful as you!

Best wishes.

Ant

Hi colleagues,

I recently faced the same problem with this unsupported length of filenames (particularly with Mail- and TextEdit-files). Searching the Internet I found a hint that led me to a solution (Apple Mail Fehler beim Speichern von Anhängen - Namen mit mehr als 31 ...)(sorry, german only).

According to that hint the problem is caused by the usage of an external Windows-(MS-DOS)-formatted drive (i.e. USB-stick or else) , where the Mac seems to take over this formatting-infos and „remembers“ them when you later want to save a file on your disk.

Recapitulating the steps I did before I was confronted with that annoying error message I suggest:

you better not open, edit, save and close a file while it’s still located on the MS-DOS-stick (SD-card…) but copy or move it to the Mac, edit and save it there, then copy or move it back to the external drive.

Simply transferring files from one drive to the other does not cause a problem but to open , edit , save and close a file directly on the ext. drive leads to the unwanted error-message (most probably you also get a message telling you, that „Versions“ is not supported when saving and closing the file on that drive).

So I did the following to get rid of the 31-character limitation:

1. go to ~/Library, search for the „Caches“-folder, delete it

2. search for the „Caches“-folder in Macintosh HD/Library and delete it (admin identification may be necessary)

3. go to Macintosh HD/System/Library and again delete the „Caches“-folder herein (admin-ID needed).

4. restart the Computer (the Cache-folders are rebuilt automatically).

Proofing file-saving in Mail and TextEdit brought up no more error messages.

For me it works and I hope it will for you.

All the best

Norbert

PS: I found this reply by Niel on the same issue which I think supports the theory of how the target drive is formatted.

Thanks, Udo and Kurt. This solved my problem. I'm on El Capitan. The surprising thing was that having one of these special characters in a file name ANYWHERE on the hard drive will prevent me from saving a file with a long name anywhere else on the drive (saving from an Adobe CC app). OSX seems to allow the file names with characters that cause these problems, but then it will cause a problem later on when saving to that drive from specific apps.

Thanks floyd42, this solution fixed the problem for me.