Characters to Avoid in Directories and Filenames

Naming conventions are important in folders as well as for files such as PDFs, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets.

Do not use any of these common illegal characters/symbols:

Also, keep these rules in mind.

• Don’t start or end your filename with a space, period, hyphen, or underline.
• Keep your filenames to a reasonable length and be sure they are under 31 characters.
• Most operating systems are case sensitive; always use lowercase.
• Avoid using spaces and underscores; use a hyphen instead.

Good filenames:

• index.html
• my-pdf-file-name.pdf