Long file path issues in Windows 11 Pro with Microsoft VS Code and File Explorer

Hi all
I did all of this - simply type GPEDIT in the box and run "Edit group policy" For me, on windows 11 pro, ver22H2, OS build 22621.1702 just so ya know I'm current.

My job is pretty stupid and simple - we have archived a code base (1.6tb of files) and a lot of this is very deeply nested in paths that exceed 260 char limit for filenames. Programmers are smart but also when you hyper-organize into ridiculously deep files, it doesnt work on Windows :(

So simply put - I try to drag it all from an external hard drive over to my PC - and it barfs on about 3700 files that have this issue. In spite of GPEDIT... and i also checked regedit, of course its the matching config, this was successfully saved etc. With this many files I'm not going to be able to manually figure it out... so instead i had to go relatively deep into the file structure and copy subfolders that contained the offending files... and then save it all non-nested, and then someone will have to recreate it later. I sure do love this sh*t :)

and if you read the fine print "enabling win32 long paths will allowe manifested win32 applications... to access paths beyond the normal 260 character limit" what is a "manifested process" ?? seems that "copying files" or "making folders" or "viewing contents of these folders" is not something "manifested" ??

But yes - IT JUST DOESNT WORK MICROSOFT. Especially for simple stuff needed by regular people like me, like copying files into regular directories. I'm not powershelling or making scripts or running cmd stuff for my daily normal life, no thanks. Please fix this its NOT working 5/25/23

Microsoft doesn't read these posts. Instead, when you report a bug to them, they'll sit on their hands until they get you on the phone. Then they'll waste your time because you now have to tell them that these posts say. It's a thankless task reporting issues to Microsoft, I really don't recommend it.

Yes, explorer doesn't do long paths, even if you enable them.

You'll want to use a command line tool for the copy you're describing. Robocopy is the built in tool for that job that supports long path names.

Robocopy has a gazillion parameters and is hard to get right. For these sorts of tasks, I've farmed out all those jobs to ChatGPT. I asked it to help you and it told me:

robocopy "\?\F:\YourFolder" "\?\C:\Users\YourUserName\Desktop\YourFolder" /E

Where f:\ is your external drive and the other folder is where you want to copy to. the \?\ is to pass a UNC, which windows likes for the long paths.

I use robocopy all the time and that line looks about right. Depending on where you're copying to, you may want to pick an Admin console or Admin powershell. (Do NOT use a "powershell ISE" console, since that doesn't do long paths either).

had the same issue recently and robocopy did the job well. it's a command that you can run in cmd that will copy even the most deeply nested files.

While true, that's entirely irrelevant. No normal person is using Windows via the command line.

Even me, who knows my way around a cmd prompt would never want to have my daily/hourly/minutesly interactions go via the command line.

It's fine if you have a **** ton of files to copy over from path A to B and it contains deep nesting, etc.

That'll generally be a one-time thing, so fine to whip out the command line for that (with the added benefit that robocopy is much faster at doing this than WinExplorer).

It's entirely another thing if you're just going about your daily business of managing/organizing your files.

How often I don't hit this limit while simply organizing my files, it's just stupid and annoying in this day 'n age.

Worst of it is that, while Explorer shows the file that exceeds the character limit, it then doesn't allow you to rename said file (without even an error, just doesn't save the edit).

So overall, for many people WinExplorer == Windows. Having that one support long paths is the very least you could expect from them.

For such simple rename operations, to get files within the limits I've found that opening the folder in WinRAR allows me to properly rename the files in that folder that way. Though there's no way I'm gonna start using WinRAR as WinExplorer.

You'd pretty much have to replace WinExplorer by a 3rd party app to be able to fully do basic file management these days.

At this point it's obvious they don't care to fix it though.

Application manifest is described here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sbscs/application-manifests