This article explains the different character limitations you have to consider regarding your folder and file names.
While some limitations come from Microsoft, you may face other unexpected restrictions between different tenants, such as Google Workspace to Microsoft 365.
1. Invalid characters
Certain characters are not allowed for use in folder and file names within OneDrive and SharePoint.
According to the official Microsoft documentation, file and folder names can not contain some special characters (You can find the complete list here).
These characters are replaced by “_” (underscores) when Cloudiway migrates files and folders to OneDrive or SharePoint.
Note to characters ‘#’ and ‘%’: You can allow your users to create files and folders with ‘#’ and ‘%’ characters in the drives (How to allow article), but the platform will translate their names per general rule. Due to Microsoft APIs limitations, permissions and metadata cannot be retrieved for such files. The files will be migrated without this data. If you want to migrate these files with permissions and metadata, we advise you to rename such files before the migration.
2. Path Limitation
Path length limitation is a common issue when migrating to OneDrive or SharePoint.
- A file name or folder is limited to 128 characters.
- The file URL is limited to 400 characters. However, Cloudiway truncates the URLs, see below.
3. What Is The ZTruncatedFolder Migration?
In Google Drive, the length is unlimited.
To migrate Google Drive files and folders whose length is above 400 characters, Cloudiway truncates the URLs to fit within the OneDrive limitations and migrates them to a folder named zTruncated at the root of the OneDrive of each user.
Inside this folder, a file is created that contains the original location.
For further information regarding character limitations during file migration, don’t hesitate to contact us.