Number 235 - November 2002

File Naming Rules - Windows 95 and Up
Front Range Personal Computer Users Group
A filename can be up to 255 characters, including spaces. This enables you to give meaningful names to your files. You can't, however, use any of the following characters in your filenames:     \ (slash)     ? (question mark)     : (colon)     * (asterisk)     " (quote)     < (less than)     > (greater than)     | (vertical bar)     You can use uppercase and lowercase letters in your names to improve readability. The filenames aren't case-sensitive, however. If you have a file named My 1999 Budget and try to save another file with the name MY 1999 BUDGET, Excel asks whether you want to overwrite the original file.     If you plan to share your files with others using operating systems pre-dating Windows 95, you should make sure that the filename is no longer than	eight characters, with no spaces*. Otherwise, the filename will appear rather strange. For example, a file named My 1999 Budget will appear as MY1999~1.XLS, because Windows assigns every file an eight-character filename to be compatible with pre-Windows 95 operating systems.     Copyright Front Range Personal Computer Users Group TOGGLE Editor's Note:     * In MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, the filename can, indeed, be up to eight characters in length followed by a period or "dot" and a three letter extension e.g. filename.ext. If you go to MS-DOS mode from Windows 9x, and enter DIR to display the directory of files, the shortened 8 character filenames will be displayed on the left side of the listing and the full Windows 9x filename will be displayed on the right. Of course a long list of filenames will scroll off the screen but can be displayed a screenfull at a time by using the DOS MORE command after the vertical bar or "pipe", for example DIR | MORE.
Number 235 - November 2002