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aprilafternoon's avatar
aprilafternoon
Helpful | Level 5
7 years ago
Solved

Share links don't work on Android

For a while now, I've been sharing Dropbox documents in PDF format via email. Once in a while people tell me they "can't open the links." I always just assumed they didn't know what they were doing, ...
Error Messages
Mobile
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Shared Links
  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    7 years ago
    Hi virtue, in general, this error message seems to be a generic error message related to a third party app. 
     
    For this reason, I’d recommend attempting to opening the link with a mobile browser and, if you’re still having issues, you can always contact our Support team for a more in-depth look on the matter using our internal tools. 
     
    Thanks in advance!
     
     
    This thread is closed due to inactivity. Please feel free to create a new topic here. 
Lusil's avatar
Lusil
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
7 years ago
Thanks for trying this out for me, aprilafternoon. 
 
Could you please try manually copy-pasting the shared link you have into a browser and see if that does the trick?
 
Let me know of any updates! 
aprilafternoon's avatar
aprilafternoon
Helpful | Level 5
7 years ago

Lusil,

Surprisingly, even that doesn't work! If I use the dl=0 option, nothing happens, and if I use dl=1, the file downloads but won't open (other PDF files on the device do open).

  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    7 years ago
    Thanks for trying these out for us, aprilafternoon. 
     
    It sounds like the device that you’re trying to preview the file on doesn’t have a supporting third party app to open it, which would explain why it doesn’t load even when you download it. 
     
    For this reason, I’d recommend navigating through a web browser to find a third party app that would allow you to access the file type in question. 
     
    Let us know if you have any other questions!
    • aprilafternoon's avatar
      aprilafternoon
      Helpful | Level 5
      7 years ago

      The device I was testing on does indeed have a PDF viewer, which works fine with other PDF files (I checked). And my Dropbox links open fine on iOS and in the desktop browser... so I know the file contained in the link is a real PDF. I think there is a bug somewhere in the way Dropbox is delivering these files to Android OS.

      • Lusil's avatar
        Lusil
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        7 years ago
        Thanks for your swift reply, aprilafternoon . 
         
        In order to have a more in-depth look into this, I’d have to move this discussion to email due to account-specific info that’ll be needed. 
         
        For this reason, I’ve sent you an email to the email address associated with your Community profile. Please check your inbox for my latest message and we’ll take it from there. 
         
        Cheers!

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