Windows Cannot Complete Extraction: Path Length Appears Within Limits

Question

I am encountering a Windows ZIP extraction issue.

When I open a PDF directly from a ZIP archive (without manually extracting it), Windows displays:

"Windows cannot complete the extraction. The destination path is too long."

The ZIP filename is approximately 70 characters long, the PDF filename is approximately 40 characters long, and the total path length is around 150 characters.

Interestingly, when I rename the ZIP file to a much longer name (over 130 characters), the PDF opens successfully.

Since the total path length is below the traditional Windows limit, I am trying to understand:

1. What other factors besides total path length can cause this error?
2. Does Windows use a temporary extraction path when opening files from ZIP archives?
3. Are there known limitations related to ZIP metadata, filename encoding, or shell extraction?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Hello Shubham Rajak,

Thanks for replying.

That actually explains a lot.

The path change consistently happens when the file name length reaches a certain point (68 to 71 is an acceptable range to consider it being consistent. This might come from the built-in compressed folders implementation rather than a genuine path-length restriction. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done on our end.

For now, I suggest that you can use other extraction tool to work around it. Also, you can submit your situation into the Feedback Hub in your Windows computer to send it to the engineering team so they can implement an improvement in a future update.

Thank you for your understanding.

Answer 2

Hello Shubham Rajak,

Thanks for replying.

Please understand that our forum is a public platform, and we will modify your question to cover your personal information in the description. Please notice to hide these personal or organization information next time you post error or some information to protect personal data.

Based on the behavior, I believe that the cause is because Windows is using 2 different naming algorithms for temp folder. As you can also see, the name in the first scenario is duplicated, while in the second one, it was shortened to.d5f suffix. And you are right, it might be the name length, and your case just happen to be coincided with it. However, I don't see any documented article about this yet. In this case, can you please try to enable long path in the registry to see if it helps?

Disclaimer: Generally, modifying registry subkeys or work group is intended for advanced users, administrators, and IT Professionals. It can help fix some problems, however, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For further protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click How to back up and restore the registry in Windows - Microsoft Support to view the article.

• Type regedit in the search bar and press Enter
• Go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
• Set LongPathEnabled to 1. (create one if it doesn't exist)
• Restart your computer.

Also, there is a test that you can do. Please try to add characters one-by-one to the original name and observe on how the path change.

I'm waiting for your reply.

Answer 3

Hello Shubham Rajak,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Aside from the destination path, the extraction will also consider the internal path inside the zip files for path length, so if the internal path makes the total path exceed the characters, this error can occur. However, I doubt that this is the case since if it is, adding more characters to the zip file should make matters worse.

Windows does use a temporary extraction path when you open files directly from the zip files. For example, it will extract the file to C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\ and then open it, when you close the files, the extracted file will be lost.

On your last question, the built-in extraction tool is not as robust as other tools. So there might be some function that file zipped from other tools that might not be supported with it and return a generic error like this. In this case, can you please take one of the problematic files and try to open it with a tools to see if it works?

I'm waiting for your reply.