Hi there, thanks for this great component

I have a problem with folders having the symbol '&' in it's name.
When imported, the folder name deletes the & and so the folder can't be found.

I don't want the system to rename those folders and i want the keep the '&' symbol because...well, it matters to us

On the FTP, we have:

/mnt/books/M/Meet Ana&Peter
When the cron runs, it will save the folder name as Meet Ana Peter, so then it claims the folder can't be found...and files can't be scanned, and so on.

Even worst, it creates 1 categoriy and 1 sub-category: The first named "Meet Ana&Peter" (good) and a sub-category named "Ana&Peter" 
The UTF-8 option is checked.

How can i fix these?

Hi,
also here we will check it. Which settings do you use here (see pic)?
The automaticly folder names creation is enabled in settings?

Hi,

no option is disabled as folder structure must remain the same, as it is shared between other process.
We want to explore a mount, not create it or modify it by other means than manually.

Hi
Have reproduced
I set up the Files & Folders options as you have shown. Then I 'manually' added a file by FTP with the name 'Helen0 & Helen1.pdf' directly into an appropriate folder. Next used the auto monitoring function.  File was made into a Download with the same name.  The alias was set to 'helen0-helen1'.  But the Downloadable file had been renamed as 'Helen0   Helen1.pdf'

The next test was to create a new Download in the backend again with name Helen0 & Helen1 but in a different category.  It gave same alias but showed the assigned file as Helen0   Helen1.pdf  - see attached pics.
Next changed the Use UTF-8 setting to No as in attached pic and repeated the create a new Download in Backend but choosing category 'Audio and Video'.  This time the file name was good as shown in ampersand04.png and ampersand05.png
Colin

Hi,
I believe that jDownloads was (and probably still is) the first extension that allows utf-8 characters for folders and files. At least I don't know of any other Joomla extension (but I am not necessarily up to date). Since this was not easy during development, I don't want to change anything about it at the moment.

Nevertheless I will have a look at the implementation around the special characters usage. But I cannot promise anything.

By the way, when you have a problem with the & character why do you not use 'and' ? 

The problem here is that the & symbol is port of a brand (take this as example https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procter_%26_Gamble ) and so having P&G_Brochure.pdf is important as a brand

Like a folder structure /mnt/files/P&G/Brochure/P&G_brochureQ3.pdf

But ok, if this isn't possible, i'll advise what else we can do, thanks.

Hi,
I understand what you mean. But it is not a problem to name the category as 'Procter & Gamble' and use for folder 'Procter and Gamble'.
The same for files. The Download title can without problems have this character but not the filename. And for the file name it should not matter.

But as I told before I will check it. 

By the way, the url from the website is pg.com and not p&g.com. As it is not possible as it is a reserved character.

Tell that to commercials who write tons of documents to forget about the & in their filenames 
(the folder is synced with their machines as a mount point)

I fully understand your point, the problem here is more political than from a technical point of view.

PS: The brand itself doesn't have the &, but all the products have it, like D&Q, P&R, S&T and so on...

Hi,
users which want to use special characters (like: #()) in your Folder and/or Filenames should always deactivate the 'Use utf-8' option!
Please try this.

Maybe it could be possible to allow some special characters more also when utf-8 option is active. I must check this more in detail.