Adjust Sharepoint URL field length

Question

Is there anyway to change the length of the field that Sharepoint uses to store URLs. Its default is 255, which is just not long enough to hold links to content within the sharepoint site.

Answer 1

No, this is a hard limit in SharePoint. Studying the schema of the content database reveals the limit originates from the primary key columns DirName and LeafName in the AllDocs table.

I recently worked on a project where this problem also surfaced because users tended to create deep folder structures with long folder names and long file names. We managed to work around the problem by shortening some URLs according to these guidelines:

• Prefer short URL names for sites and document libraries.
• For document libraries, start by creating them with a title you want as the URL and then rename the title to the display name of the library.
• Avoid excessively long folder names and file names.
• Avoid excessively deep folder structures in document libraries, better create a few more document libraries.

Answer 2

I believe this is a WebDAV restriction. See File Name, Length, Size and Invalid Character Restrictions and Recommendations for more info.

However I could see this being a potential problem for linking to external content (although hopefully rare).