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Characters you can't use in file names
- Thread starter Dane D.
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I've found "Mickey Mouse" to be problematic. 
Essentially, if you want to ensure that your file will work on as many systems as possible, stick to alphanumeric characters and underscores. Even spaces can cause problems.
Most OSs can handle most characters nowadays, but the list of names they can handle isn't exactly the same, and many people use older OSs. Also, some file-transfer protocols balk at "odd" characters.
Are there specific characters (or a family of characters) that you're curious about?
Essentially, if you want to ensure that your file will work on as many systems as possible, stick to alphanumeric characters and underscores. Even spaces can cause problems.
Most OSs can handle most characters nowadays, but the list of names they can handle isn't exactly the same, and many people use older OSs. Also, some file-transfer protocols balk at "odd" characters.
Are there specific characters (or a family of characters) that you're curious about?
I've had some of our older PC servers at my office reject file names with anything but alpha numerics with underscores for spaces. Any symbols (ie: @, %,#, etc) will screw up the server. This is a very old snap server that's being replaced soon. As far as the Mac end of things goes I haven't run across anything that you can't name a file - except for having the last space be a "." Even then the OS will as an underscore after the . automatically ._
Like the above poster said, stick to lowercase alphanumeric characters and underscore, no spaces. I said lowercase because OSX reads upper and lower case as two different files.
One of our clients received a couple of CDs with the following names for the folders:I've found "Mickey Mouse" to be problematic.
Essentially, if you want to ensure that your file will work on as many systems as possible, stick to alphanumeric characters and underscores. Even spaces can cause problems.
Most OSs can handle most characters nowadays, but the list of names they can handle isn't exactly the same, and many people use older OSs. Also, some file-transfer protocols balk at "odd" characters.
Are there specific characters (or a family of characters) that you're curious about?
8" Shark Replacement and 10" Shark Replacement. When I put them in a PC and click on the folder a message pops up ".. a syntax error". I also noticed that in OS X (10.4.7), when I would try to open a file in CS2 Illustrator with '/' in the name it wouldn't open.