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Forum Discussion
Dropbox Syncing Issue Where Updated Files Aren't Really Updated
Hi Everyone
Has anyone experienced an issue where they edit a document. Save it. Dropbox shows it was synced and updated successfully. Then went to PC 2 to open the same document after waiting ...
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHey SonnyP, thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community.
This is definitely a strange behavior you're reporting here.
Just wanted to clarify, whenever you're making edits to the files locally and they appear to sync, can you then access these edits online?
And when your customer makes their edits and saves the file outside of Dropbox and then uploads it, does it work?
How about the version history of Word, when they edit within Dropbox? Are the edits gone from there too?
Let me know and we'll go from there.
Hi Hannah ,
Thank you very much. Sorry, let me explain more in detail below and let me know if you have any questions:
1. My Macbook and Mac Pro are both using the same Dropbox email account.
Not sure if this will cause an issue or not, as I have seen some comments on using Dropbox with 2 different email accounts; however, my Mac environment is using the same Dropbox email account to sign into both Mac's. The Mac environment is using the free account from Dropbox.
2. Our customer's Windows 10 environment is using 2 different email accounts. We have the main admin email and then users emails. This Windows 10 environment is using the Business account from Dropbox and has about 10 computers all signed into the user email account and the admin account is signed into 1 separate computer, the CEO.
3. For both Mac and Windows 10 environments, all documents are stored on the Dropbox folder using the Dropbox Desktop app. Users will edit by accessing their Dropbox folder and then opening the Word, Excel, or PDF files that they wish to edit.
Files are usually saved and users know to wait to see that Dropbox has said that files have been successfully updated.
This is the preferred route, as Dropbox keeps the version histories.
4. This option is not preferred, as confusion will arise when users have to download a document and save it locally, say the desktop, edit it and the upload it to Dropbox.
This way does guarantee that the latest version is on Dropbox; however, Dropbox doesn't have the version history on this document. Word does show the local version history though.
Any help is very much appreciated. At first, I thought maybe the issue is because of using the same Dropbox account for all computers, as is the case for the Mac environment; however, when I looked into our customer's environment and found that they actually have about 4 different Dropbox business accounts, that ruled out that theory.
Thank you very much,
Sonny
- Hannah
Thanks for the additional info, Sonny.
I'll still need some clarifications, though.
Are these Word files shared between you and your customer? Meaning, are they in a folder that both your accounts share?
And also, after editing the files and saving them locally (which appear to have synced), if you then open them from dropbox.com, do you see the updated versions there, or the old ones?
Hi Hannah,
Thank you very much.
To confirm, the Word, Excel, and PDF files are living in a Dropbox folder that is shared within our customer's company. So they have 12 computers with Dropbox installed on each computer running Windows 10 Home edition.
Each computer varies on the Dropbox email address they are using to login to access the shared documents; however, the folders and documents are shared amongst each Dropbox account to be able to edit or delete files.
Within their organization, they are experiencing syncing issues where say, Document A.doc was edited to start with 2 pages and end with 10 pages. Then another user on another computer opens Document A.doc inside their Dropbox folder to see only 2 pages.
All 12 computers stay on 24/7, so it wouldn't be a case where an author edited a file and shut down the computer before it could update its data on Dropbox.
Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions and your assistance is greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much,
Sonny
- Walter
Hey SonnyP, sorry to jump in here, but I wanted to mention that it sounds like your customer's company might be having a syncing issue.
Do they make sure that the Dropbox desktop app is 'up to date' and not still syncing (in their system tray/menu bar) their edits when they try to update the shared files in question?
Do they all see the same set of files when they try to access those files through a web browser?
Hi Hannah,
Thank you very much. In answering your questions:
Are these Word files shared between you and your customer? Meaning, are they in a folder that both your accounts share?
- Sorry. No. In our customer's environment, Word, Excel, and PDF files are being shared
amongst employees in a Windows 10 Home environment.
And also, after editing the files and saving them locally (which appear to have synced), if you then open them from dropbox.com, do you see the updated versions there, or the old ones?
- All shared files are living in a Dropbox Folder that was created by installing the Dropbox
desktop app. Most files sync fine. Some random files had the syncing issue where on
PC-1, the user edited say, a PDF with 2 pages and edited to where it had 10 pages.
Dropbox showed that the file had updated successfully on PC-1.
PC-2, a different user opened the same PDF file and saw 2 pages and not 10 pages.
PC-2's Dropbox showed that syncing has finished successfully too before the 2nd user
opened the same PDF file.
All computers have the latest version of Dropbox desktop installed.
Sorry, no one opens the documents using a web browser, as they prefer the convenience
of editing and viewing files locally.
Thank you very much for your assistance on this. Please let me know if you have any more questions.
Sonny
