A file name can have a maximum of how many characters?

Answer 1

AnswerAssuming you are using the NTFS file system (this is likely if you are running Windows XP, to find out for sure go to "My computer", right-click on your main hard drive, likely "C:" and click properties, the annotation next to "File System" is your answer) then the maximum number of characters in a file name is 256. Keep in mind however that if your computer hides file extensions (such as the ".exe", ".doc", etc.) those still count towards your 256 maximum (i.e. if you have a program named "test" on your desktop it would appear to only contain four characters, but in reality the full file name is "test.exe" therefore taking up a total of eight characters.

The maximum is 256

Answer 2

I believe that the maximum file name limit is 255 characters (including path). So if you name it something with 250 characters you would have to save it in

c:/(filename with 250 chars)

but since most are saved in

C:/documents%20and%20settings/user/my%20documents/filename*

you already have a bunch of the characters used up.

so if you need a place to put something with a really long filename, like from a RAR file, either rename the file or put it directly onto your c:/ drive.

Answer 3

The maximum length for NetBIOS names is 15 characters. The maximum length for DNS computer names in an Active Directory environment is 24 characters.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909264

Answer 4

Windows usually limits file names to 260 characters. But the file name must actually be shorter than that, since the complete path (such as C:\Program Files\filename.txt) is included in this character count. This is why you might occasionally encounter an error when copying a file with a very long file name to a location that has a longer path than its current location.

Answer 5

255 characters in UTF-16. UTF-16 means 16 Bit unicode transformation

Answer 6

255+3 in long file file name systems, that's 255 plus the 3 character file extension. It's 8+3 in DOS or older file systems.

Answer 7

In DOS you can use user name of 8 character max..

Answer 8

255 characters

Answer 9

256