Sync messages is missing some messages

[sigrunixia]

Thank you for your time in completing this issue! 🙌

What is your suggestion?

• Get the latest messages from Sync and add the missing ones.
• Explain more about special characters/illegal characters

Have any context we can refer to?

Reserved/Forbidden characters:
Obsidian (used in links): #^[]|
Windows/Android: *"/<>:|?
Folder names can't end with a . or space.
Some android ROMS complain about emoji in filenames.
macOS/iOS/iPadOS: /:
Linux: /

For example, a What's in a name?.md titled note on macOS won't sync over to Android or Windows.

[colintedford]

Folder names can't end with a . or space.

My impression was that filenames in general can't.

Trainbuffer seems to have done it successfully:

Files seem alright ending with . but a NG for folders on Windows, at least. (https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/900870622631063552/1441564438984659077)

This comment on the post where I heard about the issue suggests that spaces are allowed but problematic:

Filenames are technically able to end in a space in Windows, but file explorer is not able to properly interact with it. It can only be interacted with using UNC pathes. To see for yourself, you can do echo; > "\?%CD%\test " in command pompt. You'll notice you can't delete or open it in explorer. Use del "\?%CD%\test " to get rid of it or ren "\?%CD%\test " "test" to rename it. (What characters are forbidden in Windows and Linux directory names? - Stack Overflow)

I don't have direct experience to work from because my use of Windows is very limited.

[trainbuffer]

I can take a screenshot when I'm back at work tomorrow, but I was able to rename a note test to test. on Windows without issue within Obsidian. It showed as test..md in Windows File Explorer and I could open it in other apps.

Not great, and I'd never do that intentionally or recommend it, but it did work.

edit: Windows 11; Obsidian 1.10.6

edit2: I failed to mention but as this in the context of Sync, note names ending with a . are syncing between Windows and iOS fine on my end.

[dawn-i]

Underscores in the file extension won't sync to Windows. Don't know about other OSs.

Discord user who got EPERM error in Sync, presumably due to the underscore. They didn't explicitly confirm but did react with a checkmark.

[trainbuffer]

Hi, dawn-i 👋

I was curious, so using Notepad++ on Windows, I created and saved the FishNChips.ffs_dbs file in a Synced vault and it synced over to iOS without issue. On iOS, I did the same and the file synced back over to Windows fine. Renamed it on iOS and it synced over as expected.

Screenshot from Windows ->

I think the EPERM error user may have something else, a permission issue maybe, going on.

[dawn-i]

Quite right. I didn't even test until now. Sorry about that.

Also, 👋

[Korefox]

sigrunixia had previously requested I add to this issue if anything is missing.
Reference: sigrunixia's discord comment

The list in the initial comment here is already much more helpful than the current section at https://help.obsidian.md/sync/messages#Skipped+messages which links out to a stackoverflow article.

The stackoverflow article that trainbuffer linked is spot on.
On windows, the following file names are not allowed:

• CON, PRN, AUX, NUL
• COM1 through COM9 (COM1, COM2, etc.)
• LPT1 through LPT9 (LPT1, LPT2, etc.)

Example: Trying to name a file CON.txt will result in an error: Specified device is invalid.

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Next, this is an extremely niche use case no one should ever naturally run into, but I wanted to mention:
Control Characters are also not allowed. ASCII NUL (character code 0), and characters with integer representations in the range of 1 through 31 (ASCII control characters).
For more information on null characters, see: wikipedia
Note: There is a crucial distinction between the ASCII control characters and Unicode visual symbols representing them. You are able to copy the NUL unicode visual symbol to clipboard from the ascii-code website link and name a file after it. The forbidden character is the actual ASCII NUL byte with the value 0x00 (or integer 0).

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To make things simple, I recommend watching this youtube video on best practices for file naming across platforms. Otherwise you'll be like me, spending hours fixing my vault due to external integrations

Here's the guidelines for cross-platform sync:
Allowed Characters,A-Z, a-z, 0-9
Allowed Separators,Hyphen (-), Underscore (_), Period (.)
Avoid At All Costs,/ \ : * ? " < > |
Avoid Leading,Space, Period (.), Hyphen (-)

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Overall, I don't feel I had much to add here. Everyone else has already linked to or provided examples of forbidden characters and phrases we cannot use. Thanks all for your contributions. Maybe now this Pinned discord comment will have a link to a help article supporting itself.

That was going to be the whole purpose of this in the first place.