Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 10  

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

Windows explorer and a load of other applications which use the explorer interface for selecting files still DO NOT support long file names / paths + folders + files names still have to be < around 260 chars -- can't remember the exact number but it's about that.

I'm sure I've posted on this a few times -

I've a load of Music files which have descriptive path + folder names and then of course track names .

Windows truncates to some sort of meaningless drivel.

Maybe totally new apps not dependant on windows explorer for file browsing might work bit things like VLC / Plex / Movie player etc etc still use Windows explorer / file explorer for browsing / searching files.

Until File explorer is fixed to handle long file names I think you'll just have to forget the option even exists as 99.999% of stuff out there still works with the fille / path length limitation whatever settings are used.

Cheers
jimbo

Yeah, the majority of people that seems to have this issue is related to their music collection which would have long path + long filenames..

We need an alternative to explorer to copy/move those files.

Kerpert said:

Hi, I have Win 10 Pro version 1607 build 14393.576 with Win32 Long Paths enable.

There is "C:\Users\.........\Downloads\music folder" with very long subfolders and files some with more then 260 characters path, but no error to read.
When I copy music folder in "Z:\music folder" on an external NTFS drive it says error path too long.

Why?

Read through the entire posts..
You will find the reason why.

For those that are having trouble moving files and folders with Long Paths, I suggest trying to move them with 7-Zip File Manager. Had several folders that were causing me problems but 7-Zip worked for me.

Basically the Long Path names (>260 characters) is useless -

because Windows 10's (Microsoft's) File explorer has not been manifested to handle path lengths > 260

i.e., From Brink's note at the beginning of this tutorial:

This actually means that an application has to have the following line in its manifest:

<longPathAware>true</longPathAware>

Since nearly all "apps" use Microsoft's file explorer to manage files, nearly all "apps" can't handle or maintain a file name with a path length >260 characters.

At best the file name gets truncated to something like:

"LAKEMA~1.jpg"
from;
Lake Matheson reflects New Zealand's Southern Alps second-highest peak, Mount Tasman, and the country’s highest Aoraki-Mount Cook. Both tower over Lake Matheson, a small but exceedingly picturesque lake on South Island.jpg

I suppose if MS manifested file explorer to handle path lengths >260 characters there would be all sorts of apps crashing.

The only thing I've found which can write, read, copy, paste and delete a file with a path name >260 characters is XYExplorer:

XYplorer - File Manager for Windows

BTW. If one counts characters in Brinks note at the beginning the longest file name possible is:
260 - (C:/.extnul) or -8 for a 252 maximum character file name - or 251 if the extension has 4 characters such as .xlsx