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I was renaming screenshots in my documents in my windows 10 Home Single language 64 bit pc. Everything was fine until for some unknown reason the system started limiting the length of file names to 17 characters and then to 9 characters! I was not tampering with my pc, the issue just appeared out of the blue. Afterwards, to try to correct the issue I tried clicking F2 to rename files, didn't work. I tried going to the registry and changed the value of longpathsenabled from 0 to 1, rebooting after the change, didn't work. What can I do to be able to keep writing file names longer than 17 characters?

Thanks in advance.

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  • may help to include screenshot of error message and exact words of it
    – barlop
    Oct 28, 2020 at 21:46
  • @barlop There is no error message. When I reach 9 characters I simply can't write anymore. Oct 28, 2020 at 21:48
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    considering Picco's thought, does this happen anywhere? like suppose you make a directory c:\blah (which by the way is a small path), and try to write a file there
    – barlop
    Oct 28, 2020 at 22:03
  • @barlop The file path turns out to have been too large. Oct 28, 2020 at 22:35

2 Answers 2

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Sorry but I can't write comments yet and am forced to create an answer.

However, the problem could be the length of the entire filepath? Have you tried to rename another file with a smallest parent folder path?

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  • Yes, that was the issue. Oct 28, 2020 at 22:35
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I think I found the reason. The situation started appearing after I attempted to name the first file in a new folder which had a file parth of 237 characters. I tried to replicate the issue in other folders with a shorter file path and it didn't appear. Well, I like to build a lot of hierarchies to my folders, so the end result is file paths I now realize are very large to windows 10 standards. But it is a shame that 14 levels of a hierarchy is too much for Windows to handle. I mean it is normal to my standards, not large. But hey, I guess we are still in the Middle Ages of computer technology. In a few decades we will laugh at the Windows technology of 2020.

Update: I found out you can download file managers to use instead of the in-house Windows one.

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  • Given that Piccio95 actually answered your question, you should check his answer as the answer.
    – LPChip
    Oct 28, 2020 at 22:42
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    Just an info: It’s not the level of hierarchy, but simply the path length. Old-style Winapi functions simply have a maximum length of 255 characters for the entire path. I’m not sure why Explorer (I assume you used that to rename the files) doesn’t use the modern Winapi, where 65,000 characters would be allowed, though. In other words: longer filenames are possible, but not all applications will support them
    – Ro-ee
    Oct 28, 2020 at 22:49

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