Hi there, wonder if someone has figured this out?
When configuring new desktop/laptop with Obsidian vault and enabling sync, I’m getting errors like:
Sync: Unable to download file with illegal name “obsidian/Terraform: Up and Running(highlights).md”
What I’m trying to do
As the result, I have a bunch of notes with illegal filenames that are stuck in the Sync cloud. I would like to rename them (so new Syncs won’t give errors) or at least download once and somehow delete.
I can’t find these notes anywhere or access them - so it seems they’re stuck in the Sync cloud.
I assumed that one of the current operating systems of mine was responsible for uploading them - and perhaps it was and happened before new illegal characters got completely blocked?
Things I have tried
I know that : is not allowed on macOS, but assumed it would work on Linux - except it doesn’t (gives me the same error).
Trying on Windows client also shows the same errors.
Thanks for all the help! Hope there’s a plugin or some other way to access whatever Sync is trying to access and then rename the files so they don’t pose issues anymore.
They should exist on one of your devices. Copy the file names and search them in Obsidian on each device. If that doesn’t find them, search in each device’s system file browser. If that doesn’t work and no one here has any more helpful ideas, you may want to email [email protected]. If it somehow turns out that the files exist on the server but not your devices and there’s no other option, you can always make a new remote vault and connect your vaults to that one instead.
The troublesome characters are most likely the parenthesis and possibly the colon, by they should both be legal on macos. But they’re not legal on Android, so I’ve had to rename files with the parenthesis on mac before transferring them to Android.
Thanks, don’t even know what system file browser is but sounds promising.
Yes, these are files with “:” in the names, because many books and movie/TV titles have them - some were auto-generated by plugins (like Readwise sync), so it’s not like I typed them on purpose.
I have stopped using “:” but this message about illegal names suggests some files are still somewhere there.
And yes, I tried finding these files on all 3 desktops now - will triple check before claiming they’re nowhere to be found!
