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Q: After President Trump’s speech on election integrity, I downloaded the first batch of the declassified documents on US elections which President Trump made available on the White House website. When I tried to open one, I received the error message “The destination path is too long.  Rename the Compressed (zipped) Folder and try again.”  I tried to rename the file, but Windows wouldn’t let me do that. I’m stuck. Can you help?

 – Ed R.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A: Can I help?  Well, I think I can help, but I’ll leave the ultimate judgement to you, based on whether my answer actually solves your issue.  I guess that’s the difference between idle advice, and actual help.

The dreaded “destination path is too long” error is a classic Windows quirk that happens because Microsoft operating systems traditionally define a value called MAX_PATH, which is the absolute maximum length of a fully-qualified file path which includes everything from the drive letter and user name down to the file name and extension.  MAX_PATH is set at 260 characters. 

When you download a massive archive of government documents with long, descriptive file names, Windows quickly chokes on its own rules. When a file’s fully-qualified path exceeds the limit, Windows blocks you from opening or even renaming the folder because the temporary processing path required to make those changes also violates the restriction.

Fortunately, you can bypass this structural limitation using a few different methods. The easiest and quickest trick is to shorten the starting point of the file path by moving the file out of your deeply nested user folders. Simply cut the downloaded zip file from your Downloads folder, navigate directly to the root of your drive—which is typically Local Disk C—and paste it right there. By placing the file directly at the root of your drive, you instantly shave dozens of characters off the total path length. From this new, shorter location, the standard Windows extraction tool should have enough breathing room to open the archive without complaining.  Just remember that the length of the folder path to which you extract them will be added on to the length of the file name itself, and the resulting total is not allowed to exceed MAX_PATH.

If Windows still refuses to cooperate, you can bypass the built-in system tools entirely by using a third-party utility. The default Windows extraction program strictly enforces the character limit, but free, open-source archivers like 7-Zip do not. Once you install a utility like 7-Zip, you can right-click the problematic archive and use the software’s native extraction command. It easily handles ultra-long paths that cause Windows to freeze, giving you immediate access to the documents inside, though you might still want to shorten some of the individual file names later if you plan to move them around.

For those who plan on downloading more document batches and want a permanent fix, you can alter the Windows system registry to disable the path limit altogether. Opening the Windows Registry Editor allows you to navigate into the file system controls and locate a setting named “LongPathsEnabled”. By changing this specific value data from zero to one and restarting your computer, you permanently lift the restriction. If you are using a professional version of Windows, you can achieve the same permanent result by opening the Local Group Policy Editor, navigating through the administrative templates to the “filesystem” settings, and enabling “Win32 long paths”.

Whichever method you choose, the error is easily defeated once you shorten the path or remove the system’s character boundaries. By the way, these path length restrictions are one of the reasons that I am not a big fan of Microsoft’s OneDrive.  It has this annoying tendency to pile all your files and folders under the OneDrive folder, which itself is located under your account in the Users folder. Just like the example above, this can add dozens of extra characters to the fully-qualified path of almost every data file you process. I don’t know how anyone at Microsoft ever thought this was a good idea (Thanks, Bill!) but for my money, there are much better ways of accomplishing this.

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