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Iron-Duke's avatar
Iron-Duke
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago
Solved

Edit text files

Dropbox newbie.   How can I edit a text file through my Google Chrome browser, Dropbox web page?  
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  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    5 years ago
    Iron-Duke wrote:

    How can I edit a text file through my Google Chrome browser, Dropbox web page?

    You can't. You need to download the file to your computer, edit it in a text editor and then re-upload it.

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
5 years ago
Iron-Duke wrote:

How can I edit a text file through my Google Chrome browser, Dropbox web page?

You can't. You need to download the file to your computer, edit it in a text editor and then re-upload it.

Lenwe's avatar
Lenwe
Helpful | Level 5
4 years ago

This sucks. We can edit super complex files such as Excel spreadsheets, Word and PDF documents and not TXT files ??? 

 

Come on, it's just plain text, it can't be simpler than that. We don't want a complex editor such as Notepad++ (which would be a banger) but at least something similar to Windows' notepad.exe with just copy/paste/save and character encoding selection.

 

We're in 2022 guys, this feature has been requested since 2015.

 

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    4 years ago

    Hey Lenwe, thanks for your feedback on this.

     

    I just wanted to mention that there's an idea about this posted here, in case you'd like to take a look and upvote it to show your interest too.

    • Lenwe's avatar
      Lenwe
      Helpful | Level 5
      3 years ago

      I already upvoted the idea ticket but it was closed and it's still not implemented. IMO there is a real need for this and AFAIK it should not be too complicated to do.

    • onewil's avatar
      onewil
      Collaborator | Level 8
      2 years ago

      Hi Walter, unfortunately it looks like you've closed/archived several posts requesting this feature. That's disappointing! A lot of us are requesting this. Is there a single useful way we could highlight this need to people above you and help get it some attention? 

  • scrybbler's avatar
    scrybbler
    Explorer | Level 4
    3 years ago

    Maybe I was in some weird versioning bubble, but I've been able to edit text in the Dropbox app for over a decade. But now it doesn't edit text anymore.

     

    It started to go sour a few months ago when (on Android) I had to tap a button at the bottom right to open up the editor, instead of the edit view being the default. Now when I tap that button, it asks me if I want to use a variety of 3rd party apps to edit text.

     

    TO EDIT TEXT?!?!? What the hell? MS-DOS 1981 allows you to edit text, and Dropbox can't do it all of a sudden?

     

    IMHO this is the final straw, combined with Dropbox's inability to keep my "always local and updated" favorite files always updated and local. You had one job, Dropbox, and you failed.

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