Deployment Error: Failed to extract the cab file in the solution.

Deployment woes? Par for the course.

I ran into an odd issue today while deploying a SharePoint solution via Visual Studio 2013 to a test SharePoint instance today:

Error occurred in deployment step 'Add Solution': Failed to extract the cab file in the solution.

The only change made prior to deployment was the addition of a new image file to the Style Library folder. Seems like a fairly simple, non-deployment-killing change, right?

It’s never that simple.

After some digging, I realized the image file name had an ‘@’ symbol in it:

ProjectDashboard_-_Microsoft_Visual_Studio__Administrator_

Removing the symbol fixed the problem. Incidentally, Visual Studio will warn you when your files have invalid characters, but not when pasting a file into the folder. Only when creating a new file with the ‘@’ in the name will it warn you that it’s not allowed.

In doing some research, I also found parenthesis are not allowed. See this blog post.

Are there any other file name characters not allowed within the CAB file? Comment up!

Cheers,
Jim

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