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MrBiggs
Participant
November 10, 2019
Answered

Filename with colon will not sync

  • November 10, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 1434 views

I have several file names that will not sync. This is happening on several different PC's and a Mac. It's also is happening on my local testing server and my remote hosting server. This problem seems to be a Dreamweaver issue.

 

I have deleted all of the dwsync.xml files with no change. I finally made a file name with 100 characters that did sync. I added 1 colon to the name and it will not sync. I have colon's in my filenames because I'm adding a timestamp to the name so 12:37:03 in the filename prevents it from syncing. Is this a bug in Dreamweaver? I cannot find any documentation on this issue. I can replace the colons with underscores and the file does sync. 12_37_03 works.  

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Nancy OShea

Scroll down to Prohibited Characters. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename

1 reply

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2019

On the web, file names must not contain spaces or other special characters.  However, underscores, hyphens and dots are allowed.  Rename your files without the offending characters and everything will be fine.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
MrBiggs
MrBiggsAuthor
Participant
November 10, 2019

Everything works fine on my website. I can upload and download files with the colons in the name just fine. The only problem I have is that Dreamweaver will not sync to my computer if the filename has a colon. Is there a list of "do not use" special characters? Or is this limited to the language your coding in? 

Community Expert
November 10, 2019

Colon's are not supported characters and even MAC OSX has disallowed this for quite some time. I believe the system default is that if you try to save this it will be renamed to a hyphen.  If DW has this programmed in, it is likely due to OS limitations since their software runs on multiple operating systems.  I would look to rename the files to one of the characters Nancy eluded to so that your file can be maintained on any system.  So it's not so much that the character can't be used, but rather it needs to be encoded in the URL since the colon has specific functions.