Windows (and, it seems, Microsoft in general) does not like filenames that start with a space. You can’t even create them in Windows Explorer — go ahead and try! If you start the name of a file or folder with a space, Windows will remove the space for you — automatically. Frustrating, eh?
Regardless, there’s sufficient ways to wind off with a file that starts with a space, and inevitably, if you use OneDrive, you’ll get sync errors, because OneDrive (being Microsoft) does not like filenames that start with a space.
The logical step would be to rename the file in Windows Explorer and remove the leading space — but that doesn’t work; Windows will tell you that the filename already exists. (Apparently, those spaces are ignored in more places than one.)
So how do you solve this? Two ways.
- Rename the file to something entirely new without a leading space.
OR - Open a command prompt and type this:
ren ” myfile.txt” “myfile.txt”
The command prompt lets you use spaces (provided they are in double quotes), and will (accurately) know that a file name with a leading space is not the same as the same file name without the leading space.
Best solution? Avoid the darn spaces altogether.