file names

[Dana Larson]

I support a smallish Win 2000 domain with about 30 Mac
users. We are in the process of trying to get the users
to all make SMB connections to our file servers, so we
can do away with SFM altogether. Unfortunately, the users
have at least a decade of being accustomed to naming
their files with characters that work fine on Macs, but
no so well on Windows. It's pretty clear that they are
going to have to go through their folders and rename
files with illegal characters.

What's the best way to do this?

 

[Jim Seifert [MSFT]]

I've used a freeware program call Mac2fat that does exactly this and does
nested folders too. You can find the download links on versiontracker.com.

 

[Robert S. Clayton II]

I looked at the Mac2fat program and it looks pretty cool, but it has to
be run from the Mac side. In our environment, only the 2 comapny owners
use Macs, the rest of us have pc's and all management and real work is
done on the pc side, but the principles still create files. I have
tried to get them to name files without using certian characters, but
they just dont seem to get it. They probably will not be very helpful
running this program to solve our problem.

Dows anyone know of an equivalent program that will run on a PC and
strip the illegal charachters from file and folder names?

 

[JL]

Perfect! I can connect and move files AFP is the solution! Although I have a
little permissions problems but it's nothing important.

Now we found two problems AFP OSX disconnections problems vs a W2003 and
people who is copying cd's comunnicate me that the OsX seems to run more
slowly than copying by SMB protocol

Thank You Very Much!!!!!

 

[Robert S. Clayton II]

OK, you lost me ... First off, what is AFP? I simply setup shares using
FileSharing for Mac on my server. Appletalk is enabled on the server to
allow initial connection through the chooser, but TCP/IP is the primary
protocol used.

Second, Are you saying that AFP solves the filenaming issues?

 

[JL]

Sorry I was responding to Jim Seifert [MSFT]

He answered my question and find the solution. AFS is a file protocol over
TCP IP to connect to windows server. Yes it takes care of filenames
translation. It was the connection system used by OS9.

Try from the finder to go-->connect server....-->AFP://servername or ip

Follow Jim Seifert [MSFT] instructions to my answer

Thanks