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Dashes in MS Word automated file naming

Anonymous
2018-08-17T23:07:29+00:00

Why does an automated file name truncate when it encounters a dash? Is there a way to prevent this? See the example below.

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  1. Charles Kenyon 167.4K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-08-18T03:36:11+00:00

    See the following video

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sLd7U6XzMMM

    Warning! That video involves the use of the Master Documents "Feature" .

    You never want to do any editing in the Master Document that is created.

    The sub-documents are fine as actual documents.

    What you are discussing is the automatic naming that takes place when you create the sub-documents.

    When a new Word document is saved, the default name is the first line of text up until punctuation unless there is a title property in which case it is the title property up to punctuation. I do not have a clue what would happen with a Master Document that had a title property but suspect it would be disregarded. (Confirmed, a title property in the master document is disregarded in naming the subs.)

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  2. Charles Kenyon 167.4K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-08-17T23:24:29+00:00

    No way to prevent it as far as I know (other than using a different character).

    Certain characters are not permitted in filenames, but the dash is not one of them.

    I suspect Word is treating the dash as punctuation which is a stopping point for the automatic name.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-08-18T14:36:16+00:00

    I actually discovered this problem because I was using field codes to create the file names. The file names were populated from data merged from an excel file. This was handy because it created thousands of files automatically; however, the data had dashes and so the file names did not contain all the needed information.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-08-18T02:03:25+00:00

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  5. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-08-18T01:51:08+00:00

    What is the "automation" process being used?

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