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Outlook issue while save attachment.

Hi,

I am trying to download attachment from Outlook.

When the file name is larger. It is throwing error.

Note: we are using the subject as folder name, in that folder we are saving the attachment. 

In this scenario we have subject length also larger, and file name is also larger.

Can anyone suggest how to save attachment that contains large file.

Regards,

Sravya

2 REPLIES 2

Hi @sravyachintham_19 ,

As per my experience, this may not really be an issue with the VBO, but it is the default limitation of Windows OS in general where, by default we have a character limit of 260 characters for any file path that we want to use.

devneetmohanty07_1-1718547443131.png

 

In your case, since you are using the Subject Line as the folder name, you need to check what is the total character length of the full file path including your base path, folder name and file name with extension included and check if that is exceeding the MAX_PATH limit or not.

 

If you want to ignore this limitation of Windows, it would need a registry change which many companies do not allow (Only one of my clients in the past allowed this after a number of security approvals). You can find the steps for that here. Otherwise, my recommendation would be to have a logic within your process such that it check if the full file path exceeds the maximum character limit and if yes, accordingly you can shorten your subject lines or email attachment names so that the full file path length fits within 260 characters.

 

If the above suggested approach does not work for you then the only way I see is you need to probably store these files in some other storage source (Cloud/On-Prem) rather than Windows such as in AWS S3, Microsoft OneDrive, Box etc. as it is a Windows limitation and pretty much nothing can be done if the registry changes cannot be applied. For my current client, we too faced this same issue when we were using Windows paths for storing files but eventually our IT team agreed for us to use Box cloud storage solution via API's that has helped us to seamlessly automate such processes without any hassles because of this underlying limitation of Windows.

One more thing to also take care of is, the windows file path cannot have any special characters inside them. You can see the same behavior when you also manually try to create any file or folder in File Explorer window:

devneetmohanty07_0-1718547342979.png


So, if you are let say having a subject line or any file attachment with these special characters, you need to ensure that you also are removing or replacing the same prior to the point where you save the attachments. 



Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the best answer

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Technical Business Analyst,
WonderBotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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Hi @devneetmohanty07 

Thank you for the reply, reducing folder name helped to save attachments.

Regards,

Sravya