Faster Drive: File Name Truncation / Character Limit

Modified on Mon, 11 Sep 2023 at 12:17 PM

The following is a video tutorial. For the best experience, click the "Full Screen" button while watching this video.

File Name Truncation in Windows

This video explains why some files and folders in Clio may have abbreviated names or not show up at all in Faster Drive.

Why does Faster Drive rename my files?

The Windows technology that Faster Drive uses to map the cloud drive requires that file paths are less than roughly two-hundred-fifty characters. This includes not only the file itself, but all the names of the folders the document is in.

To work around this, Faster Drive will sometimes shorten file names. This means that you may see a file in Clio called, “Document.docx”, while in Faster Drive it is called “Docu.docx”. When this happens, your file names in Clio have not been changed, nor the contents of the files - it is merely an aesthetic change that is happening through Faster Drive.

This generally only happens on paths with extremely long names such as:
A:\1. Open\The Estate of John J Smith\Smith.0012312 - 2017 Estate Dissolution Plan\Public Documents for Client\Discovery Responses\0001 - Answers to Interrogatories\001 - Initial Responses - Unrevised.docx

Simple workarounds

If this issue creates trouble for you, there are a few simple workarounds to have file names displayed properly.

If you are trying to edit files

Using shorter descriptions in Clio for new or existing matters will reduce the number of characters used in the file path. Also, by taking advantage of Clio’s “Custom Fields”, you can store additional information that is part of the matter with out actually having to include it in the matter description.

You can also try a different organizational structure or automatically truncating names of folders. See our video called “Grouping Matters for Large Firms” for more information on these features.

If you are trying to bring files into Clio

You can use the Matter Match Migrator (now available from Universal Migrator) to bring deeply-nested documents into Clio. When the documents are brought into Clio, they will have their original names in Clio and Faster Suite will show the truncated names. Once the files are brought in, renaming a long folder name to a shorter version will result in more characters being displayed. For more information on Matter Match Migrator, please contact the Universal Migrator team.

Other Technical Details

When windows stores characters, most letters, such as the letter "A" only take one unit of space, however, some special characters (such as a space or different punctuation marks) may take as much as 5 units of space. This is usually not a significant factor but we mention it because if you count the total number of visible characters, you will often find it is lower than the "250 characters" because some characters get counted multiple times.