Best Practices for File Names

A compatible file naming convention is required for documents to be opened across platforms or between different types of programs.

Check to make sure that you have the appropriate 3-letter extension at the end of the file name, this is required for Windows and Linux/Unix systems and now preferred by MacOS X (which is Unix based).  E.g. Microsoft Word files use .doc, Excel Spreadsheets use .xls, PowerPoints use .ppt.  Each program has its own unique 3-letter extension after the period.

Windows systems cannot open Appleworks/Clarisworks documents at all unless they are converted to a generic file type like RTF. The same may be true for WordPerfect, or even older versions of Microsoft Works.  Microsoft Access database files .mdb can only be opened by Microsoft Access on a Windows based system, there are no compatible MacOS X or Linux programs.

The letters or symbols \?/:|<*> as well as most of the <shift> number keys (!@#$%^&*) are forbidden in the filenames. Dashes (-), underscores (_) and spaces ( ) are "legal". MacOS X is fairly lenient compared to most operating systems and may allow you to use them, but the recipient will probably not be able to open the files.  Websites especially do not like the “special” characters or blank spaces in filenames.  If editing files for a webserver, please stick to letters, numbers, dashes and underscores.

Do not use more than 32 characters in the file name and do not have ANY periods "." in the file name other than the one at the very end, right before the 3-letter extension.  Doing so may also cause files to be un-openable by recipients, and can cause multiple problems on webservers.

Using all lowercase letters is preferable to sentence case or all caps. If in doubt, use the old DOS “Eight-dot-three” rule... abcdef12.xyz

If you are naming a file for a website and the file will be periodically updated with new information, consider keeping the filename “static” instead of “variable”.  E.g.  Instead of ‘catalog200610.pdf’ which will be replaced with ‘catalog200620.pdf’, if you just name the file ‘catalog.pdf’, then URL links to the file from numerous other web pages will not have to be updated again to match the new filename.

If you aren't sure how to change the name of a file or how best to choose a name, contact the HELPDesk for more information.