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Forum Discussion
Shared files are corrupted only for me when I open them via my Windows desktop app
Question or Issue
Shared files are corrupted for me only when I open them via my Windows desktop app and not the web
Making one of the files available offline worked? Do we keep it that way? Will it affect anything else?
- Rich
Super User II
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.
