Something that everybody involved in content migration must know.

Because you think, ok I will upload 1000 files easily with the “Explorer View”, but back to reality when you see that you have a “&” in almost every filename and you will have to rename those

And of course when you are working for a big company like a bank, you cannot rename files without approval, and it will really slowly the process.

Extract from: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/archive/2007/04/26/20302.aspx

Site Names

· In WSS Site Names may not contain the following characters: \ / : * ? ” < > | # { } % & <TAB>” ~ +

· You cannot start a site name, subsite name, or a site group name with an underscore (_) character or with the period character (I recommend avoiding the (_) underscore in site names)

· You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a site name

· You cannot use the period character at the end of a site name

File Names

· Invalid characters: ” # % & * : < > ? \ / { | } ~ 

· Cannot be longer than 128 characters

· You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a file name

· You cannot use the period character at the end of a file name

· You cannot start a file name with the period character

Folder Names

· You cannot use the following characters anywhere in a folder name or a server name: ~ # % & * { } \ : < > ? / | ”

· Cannot be longer than 128 characters

· You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a folder name

· You cannot use the period character at the end of a folder name

· You cannot start a folder name with the period character

Hope it will be useful for you.