Some BioCollect projects have particularly long names, and those names become part of the folder structure when you request a download archive of a project's data. In some cases, this has caused issues on computers running Windows that have a limit (256 characters) on the total length of a filepath including folder and file names. A symptom of this is attempting to extract files from a .zip file and seeing a misleading error message suggesting the file is invalid (example attached). A recent instance of this issue was caused by a project with a name of 61 characters in length.
A work-around that has been suggested to affected users is to instead use alternative software such as 7-Zip. Once the contents have been extracted, they can be accessed/moved around/etc. A longer-term solution is to limit the length of BioCollect project titles, and/or to adjust the folder structure of a downloaded dataset (eg. activity names and image or record IDs) to reduce path length that way.
Some BioCollect projects have particularly long names, and those names become part of the folder structure when you request a download archive of a project's data. In some cases, this has caused issues on computers running Windows that have a limit (256 characters) on the total length of a filepath including folder and file names. A symptom of this is attempting to extract files from a .zip file and seeing a misleading error message suggesting the file is invalid (example attached). A recent instance of this issue was caused by a project with a name of 61 characters in length.
A work-around that has been suggested to affected users is to instead use alternative software such as 7-Zip. Once the contents have been extracted, they can be accessed/moved around/etc. A longer-term solution is to limit the length of BioCollect project titles, and/or to adjust the folder structure of a downloaded dataset (eg. activity names and image or record IDs) to reduce path length that way.