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There's a bunch of files on a network drive, on a fairly deep path and the directories on most of of have long names. I think that these were originally created when someone copied & pasted the root directory for this group of files from their local workstation to the shared network drive. I imagine that on the local workstation, there was no problem opening the file, but now that they are on a longer path on the network, Windows can't open them when I double-click. I've also tried copying the files, and renaming them to somethign shorter, but Windows is unable to do that as well.
TL;DR
files from someone's workstation on a (hypothetical) path like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\SomeUser\Files\RootOfLongFileNames\LongSubdirectoryName1\...\VeryLongAndDescriptiveAndSpecificFilename.xls
-----------------------------------------^
have now been copied and pasted on to the network like this:
Q:\Dir1\Dir2\ProjectA\FilesForSomething\SomeotherDirectory\Blahblah\RootOfLongFileNames\LongSubdirectoryName1\...\VeryLongAndDescriptiveAndSpecificFilename.xls
---------------------------------------------------------------------^
And the path is now too long for Windows XP to handle.
Any tips as to how I can read these files?
Ok !
Look at http://superuser.com/questions/257472/windows-cannot-open-directory-with-too-long-name-created-by-linux
@bZezzz: That looks like it would work on a file-by-file basis, but I'm looking for some what to make the whole bunch of them accessible all at once. Copying to local workstations would be OK but the long filenames must be preserved (they provide very specific context for the file contents). Also, many users here are not technical enough to start opening files from the command line. Your suggestion might work for me and one other person. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner – 2012-01-10T21:52:57.410