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Even though your system may allow you to use many symbolic characters in your file names, or create them with very long names, for maximum compatibility with Mac/Unix systems, there are certain characters you should avoid.

The Best Characters

The best file names are under 32 characters long and contain only the following characters:

Alpha Numerics

  A through Z
a
through z
0 through 9

Also Acceptable

_
-
.
underscores
hyphens
period

Bad Characters

Using the following characters in your filenames can cause problems during transmission, printing or archiving.

Avoid

,

&
~
!
#
$
%

comma
blank space
ampersand
tilde
exclamation
pound
dollar
percent
bullet

Never Use

\
/
|
"
'
@
;
:
*
>
<
?
+
=
^
{}
[]
()
back slash
forward slash
pipe
double quote
single quote
At symbol
semi-colon
colon
asterisk
greater than
less than
question
plus
equals
caret
braces
brackets
parenthesis

Although the period is an acceptable character, you should never start a file name with one.

If you don't see a character listed, DON'T USE IT!

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Report broken links to: Webmaster Updated: Wed, Feb 22, 2006