File Name Conventions

J

John C

I thought Windows 98 opened up the possibility that file names could be
anything. A co-worker says no, that I still need to use underscore between
words in an Excel file name. True????
 
A

Another Brian

File names can have spaces. The easiest way to have tested this is to
try it instead of asking.

Brian
 
J

JoAnn Paules [MVP]

In most cases, no. It all depends on what you will be doing with those
files. If they are going to be uploaded to a website for download, you may
want to use that underscore.

(A personal comment: I do not like using underscores in file names. If for
some reason the name is ever underlined, the underscore disappears. I prefer
dashes or nothing at all.)
 
L

LVTravel

The underscore, IIRC, is needed when you name FIELDS or
LABELS in Word or Excel data files or macros, etc. as you
can't use spaces in those names It is not needed in any
Windows file structure. If it or the dash is used in a
filename, or folder structure name, you don't need quotes
around the names when using the command line (DOS structure
commands.) That is it's only benefit.

There are still a few special characters that can't be used
in a file name. File names cannot contain the following
characters: \ / : * ? " < > |.

A lot of good information for XP is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../en-us/windows_fcab_rename_file.mspx?mfr=true
 
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