Limits on Path Length Affect Many Tools

Limits on Path Length Affect Many Tools

NOTE: Regardless of the local user's platform (Mac or PC) or operating system, Desire2Learn runs on a Microsoft Windows platform at the server level. Therefore, the following information applies to all users.

There is a new character limit for path names, due to a change imposed by Microsoft Windows at the server level. Folder names are now limited to 50 characters and file names are limited to 128 characters.

As a result of this limitation, actions that would lead to a path length longer than about 200 characters will either fail with no error message (file creation) or result in a 500 error (subfolder creation).

These failures may be seen when character limits are exceeded in the following situations:

• creating course content,
• copying course components,
• importing a course,
• saving dropbox files or feedback,
• saving locker files, or
• creating ePortfolio content.

For this reason, users are encouraged to use shorter file and folder names, particularly when nesting folders.

When troubleshooting 500 errors and failures related to file creation or copying, please consider whether path length restrictions might be the cause.

Note: The vendor has created a feature request to display an informative message when an operation fails because of path length. However, there is no estimate for when this warning message might be deployed in D2L.