Windows 11 long filename not working - Even after being Enabled

Hello everyone.

I have recently noticed a problem with Windows 11, where:

• I can't enter more than approx. 56 characters for folder names.
• Windows throws an error when moving any previous folders with more than 56 characters.

So I followed a guide to enable this option in both Group Policy and in Regedit, which I did, but after restarting, I'm still getting the same error.





Can you please help?

Thanks

That's strange. On Windows 10 Home, I just made a folder with a 227 character filename... no problem.
And I can move it around, etc. And I didn't set up anything concerning long file names.

And I made a 223 character text file inside that folder, as well. Four characters for... .txt I assume.



In order to delete them, I had to give permission to delete folders/files with long filenames. :)

TCWindows said:

Hello everyone.

I have recently noticed a problem with Windows 11, where:

• I can't enter more than approx. 56 characters for folder names.
• Windows throws an error when moving any previous folders with more than 56 characters.

So I followed a guide to enable this option in both Group Policy and in Regedit, which I did, but after restarting, I'm still getting the same error.

View attachment 27924
View attachment 27925


Can you please help?

Thanks

Click to expand...

If the filename contains certain characters, it won't be accepted. See the article at the following link for more details.

By default Windows 10/11 should let you use up to 260 characters in a file name. (That includes path and file name.)
I read that article over on thewindowsclub.com to be you should do either group policy or regedit, not both at the same time if default does not work for you. Try only one of them at a time to see if it makes a difference. Is this the article you used. How to Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 11/10

Thanks for your input everyone. It is very strange indeed, I don't use any special characters - only letters and I don't know how to fix it. Apologies about the confusion, but I only used group policy to enable the option, however, after restarting the pc, when I went into regedit, it showed that the option was now 1, which meant it was also enabled in regedit.

Not sure what else I can do.

I am also looking for a solution to the problem of large nesting of subfolders

in Windows 11 Home
It doesn't work nor is it intended to, I think

and without access to folder or file renaming, there is a theoretical limitation of 260 characters
there is information about this problem where they explain:

how to activate from:
regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
LongPathsEnabled to value 1,
and it doesn't work on Windows 11 Home

gpedit.msc:
Computer Configuration Policy
Administrative Templates
System
file system
Enable Win32 long paths: Enabled
restart the pc
and this solution does not work in Windows 11 Home either

maybe it's Windows Defender protecting the system
I don't know,

nice weekend : )

Where you experience the issue? Some devices have different limitations than others. For example if you try that on a USB flash drive or an o local hard disk makes a difference. Also the lenght of 260 characters is for the full path. Are you at the root of the device or at a subfolder?

spapakons said:

Where you experience the issue? Some devices have different limitations than others. For example if you try that on a USB flash drive or an o local hard disk makes a difference. Also the lenght of 260 characters is for the full path. Are you at the root of the device or at a subfolder?

Click to expand...

this problem is from a usb drive, is not root C:\
i need access to a usb drive with some nested folders,
with subfolders of about 10 levels,

i am studying and i need subfolders of an external usb drive to store
each content class in text files note_0x.txt (files) class_date (subfolders) category (more folders),

I have tried these two solutions without success.

there is a very marked limitation in the file explorer,
cutting the folder names, I can continue working,
but I cannot reflect all the necessary information,
it is inconvenient for work, I will wait for a solution
thanks for answering : )

I'm afraid that you have to use shorter file names in a UDB flash drive if you want ten levels deep. Local hard drive doesn't have this limit. Anyone knows why?

TCWindows said:

Hello everyone.

I have recently noticed a problem with Windows 11, where:

• I can't enter more than approx. 56 characters for folder names.
• Windows throws an error when moving any previous folders with more than 56 characters.

So I followed a guide to enable this option in both Group Policy and in Regedit, which I did, but after restarting, I'm still getting the same error.

View attachment 27924
View attachment 27925


Can you please help?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I had the same problem. I noticed that editing the file name in the Explorer got stuck after 248 characters, but opening a DOS-box and entering "ren <short file name> <long file name>" succeeded

JohnPool said:

I had the same problem. I noticed that editing the file name in the Explorer got stuck after 248 characters, but opening a DOS-box and entering "ren <short file name> <long file name>" succeeded

Click to expand...

Please see:

I've recently had long folderfile name issues and I thought I'd make a post of my "fun" times. It all started as I recently moved to a new PC and one of the last actions was to transfer my files from old to new PC. I use Syncback Pro for data backup and my method of data transfer to the new PC consisted simply of copying the appropriate folders contained on my Syncback backup disk (no fancy disk encryption) to my new PC.

What have I learnt? First of all I now realise I haven't been good in keeping my filename names under the 255/260 character limit. PathLengthChecker (GitHub - deadlydog/PathLengthChecker: Path Length Checker is a stand-alone app that returns the paths and length of all files and directories in a given directory.) soon informed me that some folder paths exceeds 300 characters. It is interesting that Syncback Pro mirrored every file correctly regardless of the filename size, that is, the original drive on the old PC and the Syncback drive are identical. Of course, this doesn't mean that there isn't some limit, which I haven't reached, that may cause Syncback Pro some issues.

My new PC didn't have LongPathsEnabled, so as I began to move folders from the backup drive to the drive in my new PC errors stated popping up regarding filenames being too long. My cheat to get around such issues is to copy a group of folders to the root of my data drive then move them once they have been transferred from the Syncback drive to my new PC data drive. Explorer seems to allow you to create filenames exceeding 260 characters by cutting/pasting folders on th esame disk. However, Explorer seems to get upset when you attempt to access files with names exceeding 260 characters. Anyway, this method got me out of a few sticky situations but ultimately even this method failed to copy some files from my backup drive to my new PC, those with filenames above about 300 characters.

At this stage I enabled LongPathsEnabled and expected all my problems would be solved. Nope, Windows Explorer still chocked on the files exceeding about 300 characters. I do not know why LongPathsEnabled did not work, although a MS page does indicate that some copy operations are still stuck with the 260 character limit, regardless of the LongPathsEnabled setting. BTW, the old PC didn't have LongPathsEnabled enabled.

I was comptemplating the arduous process of shoretening folder and file names on my backup disk to move the files to my new PC. That would have been a chore, fortunately I came across Long Path Tool Pro (LPT) (Long Path Tool 5 – advanced long path files manager) and Long Path Fixer (LPF) (Long Path Fixer for Windows. "Path Too Long" Error? This free tool can copy, move, rename and delete files and folders with VERY Long Paths!). To cut a long stroy short, LPF worked like a charm and copied all the files from my backup drive to my new drive (without the need to envoke any other tricks). I admit is was slow but it worked beautifully. LPT also promised to do copying for you too, but it failed to live up to expectations and reported errors with those files having more than about 300 characters in their name. I'm not certain if the results for these two programs would be different if I handn't envoked LongPathsEnabled.

I hope these notes help other people having copying issues.

HeyitsNeil said:

At this stage I enabled LongPathsEnabled and expected all my problems would be solved. Nope, Windows Explorer still chocked on the files exceeding about 300 characters. I do not know why LongPathsEnabled did not work, although a MS page does indicate that some copy operations are still stuck with the 260 character limit, regardless of the LongPathsEnabled setting.

Click to expand...

The LongPathsEnabled setting makes no difference with Explorer. Regardless of that setting, Explorer can only navigate long paths. It cannot add to, remove from, or edit long paths in any way. This is true even in the latest Explorer in Windows 11 23H2.

The LongPathsEnabled setting does make a difference for the command line. Without that setting, you will find that you cannot CD into a folder beyond the normal 260 character path limit, or perform any other action on a long path (unless you prefix the long path with \\?\).

BTW, here's a list of file managers that support long paths:


Out of the ones I tested, I thought Directory Opus was the best. YMMV.

LesFerch said:

The LongPathsEnabled setting makes no difference with Explorer. Regardless of that setting, Explorer can only navigate long paths. It cannot add to, remove from, or edit long paths in any way. This is true even in the latest Explorer in Windows 11 23H2.

The LongPathsEnabled setting does make a difference for the command line. Without that setting, you will find that you cannot CD into a folder beyond the normal 260 character path limit, or perform any other action on a long path (unless you prefix the long path with \\?\).

BTW, here's a list of file managers that support long paths:

The files names would be too long for the destination folder - error

I am getting this error every time I try to transfer files to a new location. All PDF. Used instructions from here to Remove the 260 Character Path Limit with the Local Group Policy Editor. Still no success. Any thoughts about what might be going on? Thanks!

www.elevenforum.com

Out of the ones I tested, I thought Directory Opus was the best. YMMV.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the list, LesFerch. I'll take a look and some and probably move to it.