Shared files are corrupted only for me when I open them via my Windows desktop app

Hey tevans​, thanks for letting us know about this.

Can you give us some more info on what you mean by "corrupted"? What exactly do you see when you try to open them?

If you could send a screenshot of how the files look in your Dropbox folder and a screenshot of what you see when you try to open them, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

The files are in the folders on desktop dropbox on computer, However, when we try to open the file it comes up with error that file is corrupt.  I can open the file on the web based dropbox.  I have tried to resync and I currently logged out and back in to try to reindex but still is not working.  I know it may take some time to reindex, so I will see if that will help.  I have never come across this issue so I am stumped.  The computer also just had a Windows update.  That is when the problem began.

Hmm, can you send me the screenshots I asked for on my previous reply, so I can have a visual, tevans?

Are the files in question set to online-only or to available offline?

Also, are you only having issues with these specific files or with all the files in your Dropbox folder?

the settings in the files are online-only;   All the files in the desktop dropbox cannot be accessed.  Here are some of the errors received.

Thanks for the screenshots, tevans!

Can you switch a file to "available offline", as a test, to see if it helps?

If not, try to move one of the files to a location closer to the main (root) Dropbox folder, to shorten the file path to see if that makes a difference.

I will try in the am...leaving for the day...I will update tomorrow.

Not a problem, tevans! Enjoy the rest of your day!

Making one of the files available offline worked?  Do we keep it that way?  Will it affect anything else?

tevans wrote:

Making one of the files available offline worked? Do we keep it that way? Will it affect anything else?

That just indicates where the file is stored. Files marked as Available Offline are stored on your local hard drive. Files marked as Online-only are only stored in the cloud and the local file is just an alias.

When you try to open an Online-only file, normally what should happen is that Dropbox downloads the file to your local drive and marks it as Available, and then your application opens it. If that takes too long or the application doesn't wait, it might be trying to open the alias instead of the actual file, resulting in the error you received.

The only thing that having your files marked as Available Offline will affect is the storage space on your local drive. Online-only files don't take up disk space while files that are Available Offline do. If you have plenty of disk space, having your files marked as Available Offline isn't an issue. Personally, my entire Dropbox (about 300GB) is marked as Available Offline on my main computer, and Online-only on my laptop and other devices.