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PRB: Path Limit Is 260 Bytes, Not Characters

Article ID: 172895 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q172895

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SYMPTOMS

When adding files or creating folders in your project, you may see the following message:

The folder name you specified is too long. The complete folder path must be less than 260 characters.

You may see this message even if your path is less than 260 characters because of one of the following reasons:

This limit is the number of bytes supported in the path, not the number of characters. If using double-byte characters, you will hit this limit long before you have 260 characters in the path.
The path on your client machine is longer than the path on the Web, so you hit this limit sooner than expected.

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The path to the Web files on the server may be shorter than the path to the files on the local drive. Although the Web path may be short enough, when you add a few extra folders for the local drive location the path becomes too long. For example, a Web path could be as follows:

"C:\inetpub\wwwroot\some long path" (less than 260 characters)

While the path on the local drive could be as follows:

"C:\program files\devstudio\an extremely long project directory\ MyProjects\some long path"

This simple example adds just over 50 bytes to the path length.

When working with double-byte characters, these limits are reached much faster, and the difference between the Web path length and the local path length would be more distinct.

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