Mac Office X File name

[Ray H.]

I have come across a problem working in Office X in a Mac OS 10.3.5
environment. 

When a file is named longer than 27 characters, once the file is
opened the name gets truncated and renamed to contain alphanumeric
characters. For example, if a file is named
KGCaylxNewDiversityProposal.ppt then it will open in PowerPoint with
the exact file name displayed in the application's title bar since the
file is 27 characters or less.  But say the file is named
KGCaylxNewDiversityProposal093004.ppt.  Once you open the file in
PowerPoint you will notice that name of the file in the application
bar will look something like this: KGCaylxNewDivers#JSH97BF. The
naming convention is completely random and the only thing I have been
able to discover thus far is that this doesn't happen to files with
less that 27 characters.

I have installed the various Office updates but that hasn't solved the
problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Ray H.

 

[Tom Stiller]

I have come across a problem working in Office X in a Mac OS 10.3.5
environment. 

When a file is named longer than 27 characters, once the file is
opened the name gets truncated and renamed to contain alphanumeric
characters. For example, if a file is named
KGCaylxNewDiversityProposal.ppt then it will open in PowerPoint with
the exact file name displayed in the application's title bar since the
file is 27 characters or less.  But say the file is named
KGCaylxNewDiversityProposal093004.ppt.  Once you open the file in
PowerPoint you will notice that name of the file in the application
bar will look something like this: KGCaylxNewDivers#JSH97BF. The
naming convention is completely random and the only thing I have been
able to discover thus far is that this doesn't happen to files with
less that 27 characters.

I have installed the various Office updates but that hasn't solved the
problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Although the window's title bar display's a hashed version of the
filename, the actual name on disk is not changed and the "Save" will
preserve the proper filename.

 

[Alex H.]

The short answer: Office v.X apps don't support the same character length
file names as OS X itself does.

Tom's right about the Save thing leaving the "true" filename unchanged, from
within an Office app. However, if you want to send someone a file with a
long name as an attachment in Entourage, you'll notice the same truncation
appears for the attachment's name. I'm guessing that means that the
recipient gets the truncated name, but I didn't bother to find out; I just
sent from another app that didn't truncate.

I asked the same question on boards back when Office X came out. Based on
what I remember from those replies, here's why Office X is going to continue
to truncate the names and why updates won't fix it:

While Mac OS X supports INCREDIBLY long file names, Office X isn't a "built
for OS X" app in the true sense. It's a Carbonized version of the older apps
which still have the OS 9 32 character file limit; except that for some
reason that's only 31 characters when you're actually naming Office files.

Carbon-izing was a way for developers to make their apps run natively in OS
X, without having to launch the Classic environment and run in OS 9. It
meant that Apple could get developers on board with OS X fairly quickly
because they didn't have to start from scratch and build all new apps. At
least, not at first.Though the apps would run native in OS X they don't
function quite the same as apps that are really built from the ground up for
OS X -- as this file name issue illustrates.

This isn't a dig at Microsoft, by any means. They had to get Office out fast
for the Mac for Apple's sake, really. You'll probably also notice that other
Carbonized apps have the same limitation; AOL for Mac OS X does, from what I
recall (I gave up on it months ago).

Office 2004, on the other hand, is a full-on OS X app; it's Cocoa, or
whatever the native OS X code is. That means that Office 2004 apps will use
the same file name conventions as OS X itself. That means file names that
can be upwards of 270-something characters long -- or longer, I tested it in
OS X using TextEdit and folder names but stopped counting about then.

Aside from VPC7 the only other reason I bothered upgrading to Office 2004
was to get long file names. Sad, but true. My office uses a naming strategy
that's fine under Windoze but crap under the 31-32 character file name
limit.

Hope that helps,
Alex H.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Office 2004, on the other hand, is a full-on OS X app; it's Cocoa, or
whatever the native OS X code is.

AFAIK, Office04 is still almost entirely Carbon. It does, however, use
the appropriate libraries for long file names, Unicode support, etc.

Adding that support was non-trivial, but converting the apps to Cocoa
would have been prohibitive.