Hi,

I have a problem with linked files in Excel documents.
The following is a detailed explanation of my problem and the exact reason why it's not possible to do what I want. What I'd like to know is if I missed anything or of anyone's aware of something being done about it.
This issue is of course agrivated by there being Hebrew characters involved.

File name length limitations in Office and Excel:
(The most important one is the last one)
· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326039
Excel has a limitation of 218 characters in a full path (drive\server + folders + filename + extension).
· http://www.xldatasoft.com/filename.htm
The same with more detail but not from Microsoft.
· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/271513
Troubleshooting saving files in Excel. One of the steps is to not exceed 218 characters.
· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213983
Errors when opening files longer that 218 characters. Look at the Cause section of this article. This contains everything you need.
The problem basically happens when linking to a file which exceeds 218 characters in its full path.
Path
http://server
/site/library/
Filename
.xlsx

Length


In the above example the filename is 43 characters long.

With Hebrew this just gets more complicated because of HTTP escaping.


Each non ANSI-1255 character is automatically converted into an escaped combination which is 3 characters long. For example %20, %55, %70 etc.
What this basically means is that when working with SharePoint (which uses HTTP as a transfer protocol) each Hebrew filename is 3 times as long as it should be. With long Hebrew filenames and this 3 times multiplication it is very easy to exceed 218 characters. There appears to be a bug in Excel's automatic data retrieval mechanism which "forgets" the actual Hebrew filename and only uses (even internally within its memory) the escaped filename (which is now too long for the 218 characters limitation).
This does not appear to be the case when verifying the file's existence.

The reason that this does not happen when the file is opened is because then Excel uses shared memory instead of the path.