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How to view a spreadsheet on Android *without* changes being saved?
Dropbox keeps saving my changes as a separate version when I never asked it to. I am the only person who uses this spreadsheet, and I only intentionally edit on one laptop. I do sometimes view it on ...
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorThanks for the additional information ransomedbyfire - much appreciated.
Could you let us know the version of the Dropbox mobile app installed on your phone and the version of the Excel app as well?
Does this happen with only this specific file or is it affecting other files too? How does this show in the file's version history and the events page?
If you could send us a couple of screenshots so that we can have a visual too, I'd appreciate it.
Hi Walt. I'm using version 380.2.2 of Dropbox and version 16.0.17628.20074 of Excel on my phone.
I tried a few things and put screenshots to hopefully tell a story in a Word doc embedded in a Dropbox Paper doc here.
A few things I noticed while doing this are:
Excel (on PC) thinks there are two identical files in my Dropbox folder on my PC that have different last revision times. These two files seemed identical today, but I think they sometimes aren't depending on how long it takes me to switch between the two files.
The conflicted copy of the file seems to have been created when I had the same file open on my laptop and my phone.
I didn't notice anything significant when Dropbox said it had created a new version, but maybe this isn't quite happening in real time?
Thanks!
- Hannah
Hey ransomedbyfire, I'm afraid that for security reasons, we cannot open your Paper doc; can you attach your screenshots in your next reply.
Also, keep in mind that .xlsm is a file type that should not be supported for preview on the Dropbox mobile app.
Does it preview correctly on dropbox.com? And how large is the file in size?
Yeah, I know Dropbox doesn't do XLSM previews (although I believe it used to since I have successfully previewed this file in the past.) And I actually like opening it in Excel on my phone. I just wish there was a way to prevent all this confusion that stems from it like how MS Teams/Excel 365 manages to not get confused when multiple people edit spreadsheets at work.
This is what I saw when I opened the spreadsheet on my laptop this morning. These screenshots are in chronological order.This happened after I opened and closed one version of the file and then the other in Excel on my laptop.
- Jay
Hi ransomedbyfire, thanks for the info. As the Excel mobile app frequently does an auto save, even if there aren't any changes, this could be why you're experiencing this issue. Currently, there isn't a way to change this via Dropbox.
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