Problem

I encountered a little problem today. We are using a Windows shared folder from Mac. On Mac, a space character at the beginning of a folder name is allowed, but not on Windows. When such a folder name is given to a shared windows folder from Mac, it was accepted, but never be renamed, nor deleted.

So, I went to the Windows machine that the shared folder resides, but I still couldn't rename on Explorer. The error is mysterious "Access is not allowed".

Solution

It seems that somewhere in Windows code, it is rejecting the operation to the folder because it has a space character at the beginning. So, I opened DOS prompt and used dir command with /X option to short the 8.3 name.

The 8.3 name was indeed without the space. So, I renamed the folder using the 8.3 name using ren command. It worked well.

The lesson is that you never name a folder with a space at the beginning of the folder name.