Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
Unable to open "Online Only" files without setting them to "Local" first
A user at a company I provide IT support for just upgraded to Windows 10 Enterprise from Windows 10 Home. Upon creation of the new profile and setting up dropbox, it was noticed that the user is unable to open any files without setting the individual file to "local" prior to attempting to open. I searched through community posts and could find no solutions, just several generic answers and then "let's move this to emails" with no follow-up.
Already tried: uninstalling and reinstalling both apps, deleting all files and resyncing to "online only", using "selective sync" to unselect folders and readd them to the sync list. I'm sure there's other things that were tried but it's been quite a long day trying to simply access files without having to manually change the backup mode for each one.
25 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
Hi Hannah, I have exactly the same issue as hunterm. Do you have a solution for that please?
- Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey NDR2, thanks for the nudge.
Would you mind letting me know a bit more about the issue?
Are you getting some kind of error message when double-clicking on the online-only files?
What's your computer's OS and version and which version of Dropbox are you using?
You can see the Dropbox version, by hovering over your Dropbox icon.
Hi Hannah, thanks for the reply. The OS is Windows 10 64-bit Version 22H2. The version of Dropbox is 196.4.6900. I get different error messages on different file types. Please see the attachment.
- Hannah
Thanks for the screenshots, NDR2.
Just to give some insight on why this might be happening, when you attempt to access an 'online-only' file that has been removed from your hard drive, Dropbox needs to first sync it down to the computer.
While we begin syncing the content immediately, it may take some time to completely sync and open the file.
Sync speed is impacted by the size of the file and the speed of your internet connection.
If you open the associated app that opens those files and then double-click on the online-only file, do you get these errors?
Hi Hannah
Tried that with Word and Excel files and still the same.
Hi Nancy
Here is the screenshot
- Nancy
Thanks for the screenshot! If you right click on one of the files with the grey cloud icon next to them, and choose “Make available offline”, are you able to open them normally, once their syncing icon becomes a green checkmark instead?
Yes when I change a file to “Make available offline” icon change to green tick and can open the file.
But when I change it back to "Make online-only" I cannot open the file again.
