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NGraham1's avatar
NGraham1
New member | Level 2
7 years ago
Solved

Unspecified Error trying to open word, excel or PowerPoint files

Hello, 

I have a fairly new laptop that was purchased in March that I use for all my personal and professional work. I started a new gig with a company in June and was given access to their Dropbox account. I've never had an issue accessing any file or making edits however the last two week I'm unable to open any MS office files created by any of the team members. I'm able to open documents and files created by me on my laptop. It's been very frustrating as I'm unable to troubleshoot the problem and need help urgently. 

Many thanks! 

Nicolette 

desktop
edit
sync
  • Celeste's avatar
    Celeste
    7 years ago

    Hi NGraham1!

    I understand you are not able to open certain files via the Dropbox desktop app. 

    Is there any chance the files are currently Smart Synced to 'online-only'? If so, there will be a gray cloud icon by the files, and you can right-click on them and set their Smart Sync setting to 'Local'. 

    Alternatively, some applications have limits on the file paths they can access (for example, Excel has a limit of 218 total characters), and so shortening the entire name/path to the file may help. 

    You can check all of our sync icons and possible syncing issues here, too, for reference. 

    If the file is local and the file length is not the issue, can you copy the file to outside of the Dropbox folder and see if you can open it then? This will help determine if this is syncing issue or a file-specific one.  

    Let me know what you find, thanks!

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