p.c. office names truncated

[slackering]

i'm using office.v.x still. so, i dont know if this applies to office
2004 or not. but, i can't afford to upgrade just yet.

that said, i often receive word files from p.c. users with very long
names...often 30 or 40 characters long. the files are part of a project
and get longer and longer as the project progresses. often, the only
way to tell one file from another late in the project is by the last 4
or 5 characters of the filename.

when i save these attachments to my harddrive, usually the names get
truncated to something like
"SMBAProjectTraningFilesVersionXAM-1412...doc" where all info after
1412 and .doc gets truncated.

is there any fix for this problem. currently it is effectively
preventing me from using the mac version of office to work with these
files.

and, before you suggest we change 'our' naming process, let me say this
is the U.S. government....'nuff said.

any help appreciated.

 

[Michel Bintener]

In Office v.X, file names are limited to 31 characters; long file names are
supported in Office 2004 only. There's one way to work around this problem,
though, and that's renaming the files in the Finder after saving them in
Office, since the Finder can handle long file names. Hope this was useful.

Michel

 

[JE McGimpsey]

i'm using office.v.x still. so, i dont know if this applies to office
2004 or not. but, i can't afford to upgrade just yet.

that said, i often receive word files from p.c. users with very long
names...often 30 or 40 characters long. the files are part of a project
and get longer and longer as the project progresses. often, the only
way to tell one file from another late in the project is by the last 4
or 5 characters of the filename.

when i save these attachments to my harddrive, usually the names get
truncated to something like
"SMBAProjectTraningFilesVersionXAM-1412...doc" where all info after
1412 and .doc gets truncated.

is there any fix for this problem. currently it is effectively
preventing me from using the mac version of office to work with these
files.

and, before you suggest we change 'our' naming process, let me say this
is the U.S. government....'nuff said.

The fix is to get Office 2004. Office v.X apps can't generate long
filenames (e.g., over 32 characters).

Alternatively, if you use a mail program that *can* handle attachments
with long file names (such as Apple Mail), Word and XL v.X will open
them just fine (the filename in the titlebar will have a hash at the
end), and will save the files without changing their names with Save. If
you need to save a copy/version using Save As, you can then rename the
file in the Finder.

If you're not ready to switch Mail programs, you might be able to set up
your existing mail program (Entourage?) to leave messages with
attachments on the server, then retrieve them with Mail or via a web
interface. That's rather a pain, however.