File name invalid or too long

Hey all, pretty new to this so please give some leaway. Paha
I've just gone to organise my iTunes libary and have all the files in the same folder, (consolidate) and it's said that it's failed and the file name is invalid or too long?
What can I do to fix this so I can transfer all my data to my new computer with ease?

Anyone!?

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"Copying Music Failed - File name invalid or too long." HELP!

I desperately need to consolidate my music before my computer says goodbye for all eternity. It seems I can't consolidate my music because apparently, the file name is too long or invalid. I even got this program that was supposed to help me seek out the ones with too long file names. So I deleted those songs and it still won't work. And after I got the new iTunes the other day, I set it to add all new songs automatically into the iTunes Music Folder. However, it seems my iTunes is a little screwed up, because whenever I add a song with a long file name, it automatically shortens it down. For example if I add a song with the named "20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Ooo, Baby Baby", which is obviously a very long name, it will shorten it down to about the first 4 or 5 words. I naturally shorten it down to just "Ooo, Baby Baby" myself, but I'm thinkin this whole error may have something to do with the fact that the library won't consolidate.
I'm in desperate need of help here - come to my rescue, please!

Well, aren't you lucky I signed in tonight? Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait until a person who might know an answer shows up.
I have had problems with Consolidate too, and getting that stupid error message when the file name was not too long.
The consolidate function starts copying things over by Date Added, with the older ones getting copied first. First in, first out.
What I finally had to do was look in Windows Explorer for the target (new) drive and see the last file that was successfully copied. Let's call it Carole King.
Then I went into iTunes and sorted by Date Added to see the file just AFTER the Carole King file. In my case, it was La Bohème and iTunes had filed it in the Compilations folder. I selected all the tracks and unchecked the Compilations box. This made iTunes move it out of the Compilations folder
The Consolidate worked after I moved that file.

IWeb 1.1 out, Files names are still too long

Problem was brought up to Apple about length of files names created automatically by iWeb back in January and a new update comes out that doesn't address this. Many Web servers can't deal with the 255 character limit of unix and have a much lower limit on filenames. There is no justifiable reason why filenames can't be under 30 characters. Server is Webstar 4.4.
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Many Web servers can't deal with the 255 character
limit of unix and have a much lower limit on
filenames. There is no justifiable reason why
filenames can't be under 30 characters. Server is
Webstar 4.4.
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When I try to import folders purchased from eMusic into iTunes, I sometimes get a message: "Attempting to copy to the disk "C:\" failed. File name invalid or too long. Some of the tracks may transfer, but others may not. Can anything be done about this? Thanks for any suggestions.
Precision Windows XP Pro

BUMP
Yes, I just get that message. I don't see how I could investigate this problem.
I didn't mention that this happened when I was consolidating my library, not copying files to another computer.
In other words, I'm using a "normal" itunes procedure, itunes won't complete it, and won't tell me exactly why or how to figure out how to fix it...
Is there at least some easy way to tell which files were successfully copied to my itunes music folder so I can work on moving the uncopied files?
Can anybody help me?

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I'm trying to organize my music files using iTunes 10.6.1.7 and I keep getting the error message "Copying files failed. The File name was invalid or too long."
I've got music folders by artist in both the iTunes Music folder and the iTunes Media/Music folder. When I add certain files by drag/drop they sometimes get lost and I don't want that to happen anymore. I used to just consolidate my music files using the File/Library/Organize Library option and that worked, however now when I do that, I get the error message.
I'm a novice and the only online stuff I see is both confusing and refers to earlier versions of iTunes.
My concern is that I have heard that people lose entire libraries of their music when they trry to fix things like this and I don't want that. If this is of any importance, I have several files called iTunes library and temp library. I have no idea what that all means but I'm scared to death of it.
Also, I can't get to the "re-organize library" link at all. It won't let me.
One thing that be of some interest is that when I pull up the properties of the music and media/music files they are marked "read only" I'm also afraid to touch that!
Please help and please know that I am a dummy. Be kind and be clear. Step by step would be great, with images even better. Thanks.

Perhaps nobody knows the answer? We're fellow users here answering questions in our free time when we think we've something useful to contribute.
You can choose to *Consolidate selected tracks* with a right-click menu. Perhaps if you can identify a specific track that won't consolidate and examine the full path to the file & the path that iTunes would create when it consolidates the problem might become apparent. For example iTunes may not be able to move files if the source or destination path length exceeds 255 characters.
tt2

Consolidating Music Files into Itunes - File Name Invalid/Too Long!

When trying to consolidate music files into my library, I get an error message stating "Failed, The file name was invalid or too long." ????
I have tons of songs and don't know which file name is invalid or too long???

hiya!
hmmmm. we're looking for filenames here where the path and the filename has more than 256 characters in it. (at least i believe that's what the path-filename length limit is.)
possibly the easiest way to check for that is to use a spreadsheet like excel.
right-click your library in your itunes sourcelist, and select "export songlist ...". save it as a .txt file.
open the .txt file with Excel (or whatever spreadsheet application you have on the PC). the column with the path-filename in it is the one to the extreme right (you can delete the other columns and resize them to make looking for things a bit easier).
scroll through that looking for extremely long path-filenames.
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When trying to 'Consolidate Files' via iTunes I get the message "Copying files failed. The name was invalid or too long."

I am trying to copy my entire iTunes library and everything in it from my PC Desktop to my PC Laptop using the "External Drive" method as shown on the Apple website. On Part 1 (5) I am told to consolidate files. When attempting to do this I get the message "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long."
How do I resolve this?

I have just been having this problem and it has been driving me mad. The error message doesn't tell you which file is causing the problem so you can't fix it and it leaves your libray in a state of limbo with some files copied into the new location and some in the old location. After many hours I found a surprisingly quick and simple solution.
1) in iTune create a smart play list that includes everything that was added before tomorrows date. This will include everything.
2) Right click this playlist and export it as a text file to produce a tab delimited file.
3) Import this into a spread sheet, or just view it in a text editor with line wrap turned off. What you are interested in is the last column (or end of the line in a text editor). This gives you the path of the file associated with each entry in the library.
The path of the files that have already been copied successfully will start with the new location for your media files you specified. Scroll thru the rows until you get a blank path. If you start getting paths starting with the old Media file location then you went to far and start scrolling back.
The row with the blank path was the file that failed. Move back to the start of the row to find out more about it. In my case it was a podcast with a very long name. I just deleted that podcast from iTunes.
4) Restart the consolidation by choosing File, Library as you did before and the process starts again where it left off.
5) If it fails again on another file just repeat the process

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Max. path length is 255 characters, or perhaps there are some non-displaying characters hidden there. Try dropping a song you want to add to iTunes into the Automatically to iTunes folder to see if that works any better.
tt2

HT1751 Consolidating files failed. The file name was invalid or too long. How to trouble shoot this?

I am trying to move my iTunes library from old XP PC to Windows 7 PC, using an external hard drive. Using tutorial and signed in as administrator. Trying to consolidate my library and receive error message " Copying files fail. The file name was invalid or too long". Don't know what to do as next step. The library is sitting on the hard drive under the Administrator ID (My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music).
Any thoughts?

You can select a group of tracks and consolidate from the right-click context menu. You coud try consolidating in batches, say all songs by artists beginning with A, then B, etc, then the other media types, until you can isolate a problem track and then try moving that by hand and fixing the broken link.
I also have two scripts that could help you, Unconsolidated and ConsolidateByMoving. The first can make a playlist of all unconsolidated tracks, the second can consolidate a selection of tracks by moving them instead of copying.
tt2

Copying music failed. The file name was invalid or too long.

I went to consolidate my music, but when it got about 2/3 of the way through, it stopped with the error message, "Copying music failed. The file name was invalid or too long." I don't know which file it is referring to. How do I find this out?
I needed to cosolidate so I could backup the entire library to DVD. Now I'm left with two partially complete libraries with many duplicates.

To find out which file it was, look at where you were
copying them too and see which was the last file
copied - and then go back to your source, and go to
the next one - it should be that one.
I just wanted to add that I had the same issue (failure to finish copying and "invalid or too long" error msg) and at first didn't see how looking for the last file copied would work since iTunes is copying into folders.
Duh.
Reverse sort by date modified (newest folder at the top of the list) then drill down to the folder containing the files being copied. Voila. There was the (missing) culprit, and I knew which file to rename in the source folder.
Thanks for the kick in the brain pan.
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HT1751 I did all of the above and at the "Consolidate files" screen I clicked "ok" then it sayd "copying files failed. the file name was invalid or too long" and I had to click "OK" I cannot consolidate the files to transport to my external harddrive -h

I would like to backup my itunes to my external hard drive
I did all the steps up to "organize Liberary" which at this point I checked the box and the clicked"ok"
it then said "copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long" "OK"
It will not let me consolidate the files so I can transfer to my external hard drive
what am I doing wrong - any suggestions?
thanks,

Are you using consolidate files to bring in stray files to your main iTunes Media folder before backing up, or to copy the media folder to the external drive as part of backing up? If it is the latter then you are taking the wrong approach. See this user tip.
Run my script Unconsolidated on the library. It will show you the remaining unconsolidated files which might give a clue as to which files iTunes is having a problem with. You can consolidate selected files in batches (select, right-click) as opposed to trying to do everything in one go. Alternatively you could try moving the remaining unconsolidated files with ConsolidateByMoving as long as this step is a precursor to a backup..
tt2

I am using itunes 10 and trying to consolidate my files. I keep getting the error "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long". How can I indentify what file is causing this problem or resolve this issue?

I am using itunes 10 and trying to consolidate my files. I keep getting the error "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long". How can I indentify what file is causing this problem or resolve this issue?

BUMP
Yes, I just get that message. I don't see how I could investigate this problem.
I didn't mention that this happened when I was consolidating my library, not copying files to another computer.
In other words, I'm using a "normal" itunes procedure, itunes won't complete it, and won't tell me exactly why or how to figure out how to fix it...
Is there at least some easy way to tell which files were successfully copied to my itunes music folder so I can work on moving the uncopied files?
Can anybody help me?

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I consulted your website for details on how to back up my ITunes Library on my PC-found the article very helpful-I reached step 7 - clicked ok and the following message came up: "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long." Please can you help and advise what I should do or how to fix this issue. My pc operating system is Windows 7 Home Basic

You can select a group of tracks and consolidate from the right-click context menu. You coud try consolidating in batches, say all songs by artists beginning with A, then B, etc, then the other media types, until you can isolate a problem track and then try moving that by hand and fixing the broken link.
I also have two scripts that could help you, Unconsolidated and ConsolidateByMoving. The first can make a playlist of all unconsolidated tracks, the second can consolidate a selection of tracks by moving them instead of copying.
tt2

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Hi there rohitnitin,
It looks like the article below addresses the error message you are describing.
iTunes: Unable to sync photos
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3697
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File name invalid or too long

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