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

Close

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

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 5 of 6 last Next
  • by DmitTrix,

    DmitTrix DmitTrix Nov 13, 2014 11:12 AM in response to Knightjar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 13, 2014 11:12 AM in response to Knightjar

    Just for statistics: I've had exactly the same problem under 10.10 Yosemite: I tried to save a .doc attachment from Mail to a sub-folder in my Documents, and it failed with the "31 character" problem. Saving to the Documents folder itself worked well.

  • by timsktimsk,

    timsktimsk timsktimsk Nov 17, 2014 2:10 PM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 17, 2014 2:10 PM in response to Leslie Worley

    I've just had the same error. It's a brand new MacBook Pro, literally a week since I took it out of the plastic wrapping. It was delivered with Yosemite on it, and I've just upgraded from 10.10 to 10.10.1.

     

    I was using Apple Pages, and after I'd saved the document, I tried to export a PDF copy. I'd done the same thing 10 minutes earlier without a problem, but this time I got the error "Names longer than 31 characters are not supported on the destination volume."

     

    The destination volume in question is the MacBook Pro's internal SSD that it was delivered with.

  • by timsktimsk,

    timsktimsk timsktimsk Nov 18, 2014 1:48 AM in response to timsktimsk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 18, 2014 1:48 AM in response to timsktimsk

    This "solution" just worked for me:

    — with my document open in Pages, I choose File —> Export To —> PDF... and tried to save it as ~/Documents/some/path/Poster for Christmas Fair 2014 but got this stupid error message about filenames over 31 characters not being supported

    — doing everything exactly the same, but saving it in ~/Documents instead — it worked fine. I then just moved it with Finder to where I wanted it.

     

    And just to recap, this is a one-week-old MacBook Pro with all the latest updates of OS X Yosemite, of Pages, and everything else, with no extra hardware.

  • by bsarratt,

    bsarratt bsarratt Nov 24, 2014 7:33 PM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 24, 2014 7:33 PM in response to Leslie Worley

    I have had the "Names longer than 31 characters are not supported on the destination volume." problem since I upgraded my iMac to Mavericks.  It is now on OS X 10.10.1 and the problem still occurs.   Usually, at the same time it will have made many of my folders "read only".   The only way I have been able to cure it has been to shut it off and then on again, a hard reboot.  It is not caused by unauthorized characters in the file name or folder name.  

     

    I used to expect problems like this with Windows PCs, but not with iMacs.

  • by pj_sjostrom,

    pj_sjostrom pj_sjostrom Dec 10, 2014 11:31 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2014 11:31 AM in response to Kurt Lang

    I had this problem in OS X Mail, running Mavericks. I got the "more than 31 characters" error and I furthermore could not create a folder inside the folder in question. The problem turned out to be that the name of the folder began with a space! I removed the space, and saving from Mail worked once again. It's a pity, because I use the space at the start of files and folders to sort important items to the top of a directory. Doing this was not a problem until Mavericks. Anyhow, removing the initial space fixed it. Restarting Mail, rebooting the MacBook Pro, repairing with Disk Utility, setting Staff to read/write, etc did nothing.

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Dec 10, 2014 11:37 AM in response to pj_sjostrom
    Level 8 (37,994 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 10, 2014 11:37 AM in response to pj_sjostrom

    Hmm. I often create files or folders with a space (or multiples) at the beginning in Mavericks, and have done so in every previous version of OS X, and Yosemite. No errors here.

     

    We've seen multiple instances in this topic where users get this "error" message. All things other users can do without the error. I haven't been able to spot a pattern that fits all situations where this happens.

  • by pj_sjostrom,

    pj_sjostrom pj_sjostrom Dec 10, 2014 11:44 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2014 11:44 AM in response to Kurt Lang

    Interesting. Your reply prompted me to put the space back at the beginning of the folder in question, and this reproduced the error. Removing the space fixes it: no initial space, no error. It is totally reproducible and consistent in my hands.

    In reading my post, I see I wrote Mavericks, but I meant Yosemite.

  • by light man,

    light man light man Dec 10, 2014 3:21 PM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2014 3:21 PM in response to Leslie Worley

    Problem description:

    I have experienced the 31 character issue today. 2014-12-10. 

    Mavericks 10.9.5, 2011 macbook pro

     

    Textedit decided to declare that 31 character and shorter file names were required.  Textwrangler didn't have that issue with the same content and I was able to save the text to disk using Textwrangler with the file name I chose.    And that being said, when I tried to save the file as 123.txt with textedit it failed as well stating something about file not found.

     

     

     

    Thoughts:

    This seems to be a bug in the code base if it is happening to many people.  An insidious one at that perhaps.  Or even worse maybe the beginning of a virus? I am not going to read through all of the posts but it would seem this might have to do with something the base applications.  If mail can do this and textedit can do this as well what library do they share that textwrangler does not?  That being said, there is some process in my activity monitor that doesn't have a name and is being run by root. (no name to me means malicious content)

     

    Anyhow my machine cannot be said to be working as I think it should.  I have been wondering why certain odd things have been happening lately.  However from any practical standpoint the system is normal.  I am also wondering if the drives have some bad sectors etc that need cleaning... Though I am at a loss on how to determine that out of the equation.

    I am going to run time machine tonight and try to reset the system. 


    -light man

  • by vered700,

    vered700 vered700 Dec 22, 2014 8:17 PM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 22, 2014 8:17 PM in response to Leslie Worley

    It started happening to me when exporting to PDF from Keynote AFTER I installed Acrobat Reader.

    I deleted the app and the error disappeared.

    I have no Idea why.

    I have Yosemite version 10.10.1

  • by Richard Parkin,

    Richard Parkin Richard Parkin Jan 14, 2015 4:13 AM in response to vered700
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 14, 2015 4:13 AM in response to vered700

    Same problem just occurred.

    Yosemite and up to date. Saving file from Pages via Print to pdf and trying to overwrite previous file -- that is the longer file name already existed in the folder and Pages was picking up the name from there! Changing destination to Desktop resulted i saved file which was then manually copied to overwrite existing file with no problems.

  • by rj_oregon,

    rj_oregon rj_oregon Jan 21, 2015 12:02 PM in response to Leslie Worley
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jan 21, 2015 12:02 PM in response to Leslie Worley

    I am seeing thi problem too.

    Originall I posted here to thread 6704033

    Error when saving calendar exports-names longer than 31 characters not supported on the destination volume.

    Details there.

    I've ben using 10.10.1 and saving similar long files for a month, in the same directories that now throw intermittent errors. Something is buggy here.

    Happened so far from Safari (8.0.2) accessing web-based Outlook 365 (MS ! Curses!) saving a file as PDF, like many of the other posts here.

    I suspect it also caused a hang of VueScan software earlier while I was saving a file from that app, as well, VueScan hung (force-quit) right before I had the Outlook-save failure.

  • by fredVL,

    fredVL fredVL Feb 17, 2015 12:28 AM in response to rj_oregon
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 17, 2015 12:28 AM in response to rj_oregon

    even more "weirder" things happening under Yosemite 10.10.2 on my MPB 2013 "occasionally" -

     

    => from Mail to save an attached file opened in Preview by "export as PDF" : 

    - cannot save file with name >31 characters - cfr the many previous complaints

    - cannot "save file because file does not exist"

    - "volume is read-only" (sic !!!)

    - instead of saving the file was sent to printer !!!

     

    no cure by reboot/restart nor from "Save as" (with option key)

  • by random_dg,

    random_dg random_dg Mar 17, 2015 3:54 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2015 3:54 AM in response to Csound1

    Hi,

    I just found this thread - hopefully it's still active.

    I just got this error in Pages 5.5.2 which is a very new Apple application, on a very new MBP Retina Mid-2014 model. No old OS9 filesystem.

    The error with files not really being saved happened to me already multiple times in Pages, Keynote, Preview, and other non-Apple programs such as LibreOffice. In fact, the file not being saved error happens to me almost every time I try to save to a folder which is deeper than ~/Documents, and it's universal, i.e. happens with all programs.

    The work-around is to save to ~/Documents and then move it. Sometimes a reboot prevents it for a few times until it starts happening again.

    Can you help?

  • by rj_oregon,

    rj_oregon rj_oregon Mar 19, 2015 7:56 PM in response to random_dg
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Mar 19, 2015 7:56 PM in response to random_dg

    Yes, there are 2 work-arounds:

     

    1) What you said, save the file to ~/Documents, them move the file later to the desired sub-folder, using Finder.

     

    2) Mentioned elsewhere by others: when the error occurs, go in the Finder-like dialog that selects the file-save location, on the left-side pane, Click Documents, the continue to "re-traverse" the desired save path starting from your ~/Documents folder, and drill down to the desired directory. Speaking very loosely, it seems that the filesystem "forgets" some attribute and you can "re-teach it" by re-traversing the path from your Documents root, drilling down one directory at a time.

     

    I have tried method (2) several times and it works.   I navigated into the same directory that it said "could not save filenames longer than 31..." and doing so "seems" to "clear the bug out."  Try it.  What is the root cause? Beats me, it doesn't seem to be solved yet.

     

    P.S. I have not seen convincing evidence that rebooting in itself solves the problem. The problem is intermittent on my system and rare.

    P.P.S. This problem worries me greatly: if it happens on a "user file save" action, fine. But can it happen with a file save that is not user-initiated (i.e. the invisible things apps do in their everyday work), like cause a failed backup, or corrupt actions in the cloud, or...  A failed file write could really propagate some very strange errors; you do not want your filesystem randomly deciding on occasion it will refuse to write a valid file.

  • by rj_oregon,

    rj_oregon rj_oregon Mar 19, 2015 8:02 PM in response to pj_sjostrom
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Mar 19, 2015 8:02 PM in response to pj_sjostrom

    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.

first Previous Page 5 of 6 last Next