Profile issues - Word cannot open or save this file because the path name is too long

[PaulPierce8]

Hi all,

 

We are using roaming profiles on windows 7 and are seeing more and more issues with student profiles.

 

Students will work for a whole lesson and when it comes to saving they are sometimes prompted with a message "Word cannot open or save this file because the path name is too long", however the path they are saving is on the root of their documents..

 

We have been working around this by copying and pasting the work remotely and saving it for them in their areas, then doing a local and server profile reset which will fix the issue for the student. I have attached an image below of an example.

 

We have around 860 students and this is happening approx 2 times a day, sometimes with the message "Word could not create the work file. Check the temp environment variable". We've noticed that this one happens regularly if students or staff move computers each time they login, and it created a separate local profile in the format username.domain.

 

If anyone that has experienced the same issues could comment that would be great.

Edited May 15, 2019 by PaulPierce8

[PaulPierce8]

Just bumping this - still occurring. Anyone had the same?

[ChrisMiles]

Do you use folder redirection? If so whats the network path to their Documents folder? How long is it?

How long is the average user profile "username.domain" path?

What version of Office?

Edited November 12, 2019 by ChrisMiles

[PaulPierce8]

Do you use folder redirection? If so whats the network path to their Documents folder? How long is it?

How long is the average user profile "username.domain" path?

What version of Office?

 

Thanks for your reply!

 

Yes, we use folder redirection on Start Menu, Favourites and Downloads. Its not enabled on Documents, so the username.domain path is usually just C:/Users/Username.Domain on the local PC. This happens on Office 13 and 16.

 

To elaborate a little more on the issue, this tends to happen when a user moves PCs in a classroom after a few days. The issue will occur, and on login it will create the .domain profile (leaving their original normal profile above it) in C:/users. If they login to the same PC they usually use, their profile will load without issue.

 

This also happens with staff way too often - say a cover supervisor who logs in around the school, she is often asking for support because she either has the temp environment issue on Outlook, or PowerPoint simply "cannot open *filename*".

 

We can quickly fix this issue by deleting both local profiles in C:/Users, then going to ProfileList in regedt and remove their key, so it created a fresh profile, but it happens so often (nearly 3 times a day now) i'd love to try and get it fixed as its so frustrating for our staff. Its also worth noting that this issue occurs for select staff, and not everyone.

 

Thanks for any further help anyone can provide!

[ChrisMiles]

The limit on path length for office is 259 characters, is it possible that c:\Users\Username.domain\Documents\myfile.docx is longer than 259?