We received the following question from a customer earlier today. The question was something that many people are curious about so we’ve posted both the question and the answer below.
Q – Is there any way to keep a space from changing to “%20” or “#” from changing to “%23” in a file name that’s being uploaded to MDO through web folders or in the Public Folder?
A – The short answer is “No”, and there are other special characters as well.
Using web folders means each file has to have a web URL and web URLs cannot include certain characters because they are used in HTML itself. “#” is one. Also blanks are not allowed. When a file name includes one of these characters they get replaced with an “escape” character which will start with % and a 2-digit code (%23 = # %20 = blank).
This is a web/internet thing, not a My Docs Online thing. All you can do is avoid using them in file names.
Here is a complete list (many of them aren’t allowed in filenames in any case):
| Table of URL Escape Characters | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Character | Escape Character | Character | Escape Character |
| Space | %20 | # | %23 |
| $ | %24 | % | %25 |
| & | %26 | @ | %40 |
| ‘ | %60 | / | %2F |
| : | %3A | ; | %3B |
| < | %3C | = | %3D |
| > | %3E | ? | %3F |
| [ | %5B | %5C | |
| ] | %5D | ^ | %5E |
| { | %7B | | | %7C |
| } | %7D | ~ | %7E |