How to fix invalid characters and colliding file names?

Invalid characters error might come up when you attempt to create, save, or rename a file or a tresor in Tresorit.  When this issue occurs you receive the error message: “File contains invalid character.” and the affected file will stop syncing with the cloud.

To solve this issue please check title(s) listed in the error message whether they contain any of the following special characters:

• \ / : * ? " < > |
• The file (or folder) won't sync if its name ends with a space or a dot (.)
• Tresorit won't sync files with the following names, since these are reserved on Windows: ".", "..", "con", "prn", "aux", "nul", "com1", "com2", "com3", "com4", "com5", "com6", "com7", "com8", "com9", "lpt1", "lpt2", "lpt3", "lpt4", "lpt5", "lpt6", "lpt7", "lpt8", "lpt9".

To avoid this issue please remove or replace them in the file or tresor name

As a rule of thumb you can always include any combination of letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) to create unique file names. In case you need to use a special character please check the following list of supported ones:  ^ & ' @ { } [ ] , $ = ! - # ( ) % . + ~ _ 

Of you are a Linux user we recommend running the following script for detecting invalid paths:

#!/bin/bash
echo "The following files and folders contain invalid characters:"
find . -regextype sed -regex ".*[\"\*<>?\\|:].*"
find . -regex ".* +$" -exec echo {}" ends with space(s)" \;

Colliding file names is an error you might have experienced more at work than at home. Say, that you decided to copy a file or take a backup of it to another location or drive, you browse to the source location and start copying. But instead of a smooth copy-paste process you get this error.

This issue occurs because there is a pre-defined character limit, beyond which you cannot name a file or folder, and it varies from one OS to another (mostly between 256 and 260 characters). This is the character limit for a file name, which includes the file path under which it is located, like “C:\Documents and Settings\Test User\Desktop\test file.txt”.

The easiest way to fix this is to check the folder path, and shorten some of the folder names in between, thereby reducing the file path length.

Thanks for your attention.  Please discover our Knowledge Base for more useful information and feel free to contact us with further questions.