Renaming Folder File Stops Opening

[AtomicSheep]

I have an excel file that is in a folder. If I rename the folder, I'm no longer able to open the file and get the error message:

"If you are trying to open the file from your list of most recently used files make sure that the file has not been renamed moved or deleted"

If I click on it once, I see a preview of the excel spreadsheet just fine. If I move the file to another location, I can open it without any problems. If I rename the folder the old name, the file opens just fine, but I need to rename the folder!

What to do?

 

[Ranger4]

What happens if you copy the Excel spreadsheet in question, set up a new Folder & name it to something suitable & paste the spreadsheet into it. Now can you open it as your would normally expect, if so, delete the spreadsheet from the offending folder or just delete the whole folder if you prefer.

You can change the name of the new folder if you wish. It seems that there is some connection in that spreadsheet that is linked to that folder & changing it's name breaks the link.

 

[AtomicSheep]

I did some folder and excel spreadsheet juggling as you suggested. Since I couldn't open the excel sheet but only preview it, I copied all its contents to a new spreadsheet and saved it to the same name but to my desktop. I then created a new folder with a similar name, put the new excel spreadsheet in there and then deleted the old folder. Then I renamed the new folder to the old folder's name and it popped up with the same error.

 

[Ranger4]

Is this Excel spreadsheet one you created & saved yourself or have you copied it from some other source such as the internet. It seems that you only have Read Only rights.

Is this computer your own private on or is it a workstation at your place of work?. If your own, then are you set up as System Administrator. If it's an at work computer you will have to get the IT section to help you out.

 

[AtomicSheep]

Made it myself. Looks like it didn't have full control allocated to my username, but giving it full control hasn't changed anything.

 

[torchwood]

Hi Atomic,

putting this thread together with your Font problem,
Its beginning to look like a permissions problem

Do you run any 3rd party optimiser/registry editor programs.

Roy

 

[AtomicSheep]

Nope, fresh install of windows 7, just started installing programs. I have basically never played around with registries or installed any registry cleaners.

 

[mitchell65]

Have just found thiis thread and given the two somewhat related problems we have here leads me to suspect that it could be a virus problem!

 

[mitchell65]

AtomicSheep
Where did your copy of Windows 7 Ultimate come from?

 

[AtomicSheep]

The copy is genuine.

I found the problem, the file was exactly 218 characters long. The moment I renamed it to under that, it now opens fine. I found this out by trying to save an excel document of a similar name to the folder. It popped up with an error:

The file could not be accessed. Try one of the following:
Make sure the specified folder exists
Make sure the folder that contains the file is not read-only
Make sure the file name does not contain any of the following characters < > ? [ ] : | *
Make sure the file path name doesn't contain more than 218 characters

It seems excel doesn't like long file names because I've got files in the same folder with much longer names and they are fine, can open them no problem.

The problem came about because I renamed one of the folders that it was in by adding just a few extra characters which pushed it to the 218 character limit.

This just leaves me with the .ttf file problem.

 

[Ranger4]

At least you have found the problem, well done.

Keep folder & file names short, it makes them easier to identify & remember. Also keep in mind that the file name path could include the sub folder name, the name of the main folder, what directory it is in, & the name of the program that the original file came from & this path is not known to you when you are naming a file, unless you have it in mind. So you can see that this could easily exceed the file naming limit.

This MS website might help you.

Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces (Windows)