Overview

When uploading a file attachment to FogBugz, you may encounter the following error message:

A filename cannot contain any of the following characters: \ / : * ? " < > |

This article covers the filename attachments limitations in versions of FogBugz/Manuscript, On-Demand, On-Premise, and For Your Server (FYS).

Information

FogBugz is an application designed with Windows Server as a base OS. While we developed a Linux version in the past, there are some limitations that we just cannot overcome due to OS restrictions. These are the characters that are not accepted as filenames by FogBugz Servers:

\ / : * ? " < > |

These "illegal characters" indicated above have a functional meaning that affects the Operating System's handling of the files. First, the OS needs to properly interpret such a filename before it can recognize that there exists such a file. Yes, a file can be renamed within some version of Linux or OSX to use one of those characters. Still, a name with some of these characters can cause faulty behavior when working on a Windows Server.

The slash symbol, for instance, is interpreted as a separator to separate names of folders (directories) nested in each other and also names of files in folders. Imagine a filename using such a character: then, Windows would get confused when trying to access the file. (Also, / and \ get interpreted similarly for the purpose.)

Known Issue

While the FogBugz interface normally rejects file attachments using one of the characters mentioned above, sometimes it does not. It could be the case that you get the following message after uploading a file as an attachment:

Error Message: JSON API Error: Could not load /api/0/attachments/presign/

The error mentioned above occurs when a Linux or Mac (OSX) user attempts to upload a file containing an "illegal character." If that were the case, please make sure that the name of the file does not contain any of the following characters and remove them if those exist:

\ / : * ? " < > |

Confirmation

Once the affected file is renamed to remove the "illegal character," the file is correctly attached to the FogBugz case.