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IainF's avatar
IainF
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago

Excel file changes not being saved

Hi,

I use an Excel file saved to a folder in my Dropbox. This is accessed by two colleagues both of whom use Office for Mac as do I (Office 365 in two cases, not sure if one is standalone Office for Mac or 365)

In any event, though I successfully save changes to the file, when one of my colleagues accesses the file later it's as if I've never edited it at all. 

I see from a 2018  community post/reply that Excel files in Dropbox can only be edited successfully using Office online. Is this still true?

If this is the case, I'm disappointed that this is not made clear in some way for users of DropBox (perhaps an alert for any .xls or .xlsx files saved) because I suspect that a lot of people have lost data as a result.

So I guess the question is, is the problem of not being able to edit Excel files with the desktop version of Excel still true?

Cheers

Iain

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  • IainF's avatar
    IainF
    Helpful | Level 5
    6 years ago

     

    Hi Walter

    I'm not sure that this is relevant to my case.

     

    Though I may be wrong I think that the file is being saved OK to DropBox when I save it  but when it's opened by Jo, it seems that she is opening an old version.

     

    I don't know how but I can't think of any other explanation.

     

    Cheers

     

    Iain

     

     

  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    6 years ago

    Hey IainF, I just wanted to jump in here and mention that, if another user is having trouble previewing the updated versiom of the file, I'd recommend checking with them:

    • How they are previewing the file in question (via the website, the desktop app, or the mobile app)?
    • What does their version history show for that file?
    • If the file is shared with other users, are they having the same issue?

    Let us know what you find, thanks!

  • IainF's avatar
    IainF
    Helpful | Level 5
    6 years ago

    Hi Lusil,

     

    I think you're correct and the answer is pretty prosaic.

     

    Though Jo has dropbox installed she was using 'open recent' in Excel to open the file and the app was just pointing to the old version, (not sure where) rather than opening the one I'd updated. I don't know if DropBox wasn't syncing the changes to her folder or what.

     

    From now on we'll open the file directly from DropBox and see if that solves the problem.

     

    Fingers crossed.

     

    Thanks both for your help.

     

    Cheers

     

    Iain

  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    6 years ago

    No worries, IainF! We're always around to assist if you have any other questions, so don't hesitate to give us another nudge. 

     

    In the meantime, have a lovely day ahead!

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