When trying to build packages for Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps that updated last week, I ran into an error with the 32-bit versions of InCopy CC (2014) and InDesign CC (2014).
The package build would stop and give a little hazard yellow warning triangle that said “Maximum file path name exceeded”.
I was able to build packages for some individual apps, both 32-bit and 64-bit, and a 64-bit package with the same apps selected succeeded.
I was running the Creative Cloud Packager on Windows 7 SP1 64-bit and saw others complaining about the same error on Windows XP and Windows 8. I tried a few different things to solve the problem such as changing where I was saving the packages so that the folder length was shorter or changing the package cache path. I also tried purging the package cache using the provided option under Preferences on the first screen of CCP.
When all of my ideas failed, I finally found a suggestion on the Adobe forums that was supposed to work. Supposedly, if you create a user with a short name like just the letter ‘a’, the package will successfully build. I tried that myself and had no luck. In the middle of having this problem, the Creative Cloud Packager updated to version 1.6 but still did not resolve the issue.
Finally, this Creative Cloud Help knowledge base article was recommended which recommended changing the path for TEMP and TMP environment variables to a shorter location. By default for Windows 7, it points to %USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalTemp. I created a folder on my secondary hard drive called temp and updated the environment variables by going to computer properties, Advanced System Settings, and Environment Variables. There, I was able to edit the user variables for my account of TEMP and TMP to the new A:Temp location.
After making that change, Creative Cloud Packager was able to successfully build the 32-bit package that had been getting the ‘maximum file path name exceeded’ error.
