Google Documents Opened In Dropbox Are Crashing Chrome

[justin-techsupport]

I provide support for some end users, recently I have received reports from a few of my users that they are having trouble opening google document files in dropbox. The specific symptoms are as follows: 

- the user attempts to open a google document stored in dropbox, either through dropbox directly or through a link in an email or chat application

- user is taken to the document in a new tab and asked to sign in to dropbox with an account

- user selects "sign in with google account" and the page attempts to authenticate them

- this process fails, displaying a generic error message (a la oops, something went wrong), and google chrome completely locks up, needing to be force quit

We have done a fair bit of troubleshooting:

- logging out of and back into both google and dropbox accounts

- Restarting google chrome

- Restarting their macbook

- Clearing all chrome data (settings, cache, history, etc.)

- Reinstalling chrome

- Deleting all cache files in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/

- Opening the links in other browsers

- logging into the user's google and dropbox accounts on a different local user account on the macbook

- logging into the user's google and dropbox accounts on a different macbook altogether

From these troubleshooting steps we have determined a few things: 

- the issue is only present in the google chrome browser, it does not present in safari or firefox

- the issue is specific to the user's local account on that specific macbook, it is not present if the user logs into another local user account or another macbook

- the issue seems to be related to the single-sign-on process

I'm stumped at this point as to what could be causing this issue and was hoping your team might have some insight.

Thanks in advance!

[Jay]

Hi @justin-techsupport, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Are the computers accessed using the same network connection? Are these all personal users or business users, of both Dropbox and Google?

Are there any third party extensions currently running in Chrome, or any other features being blocked automatically in Chrome?

This will help me to assist further!

[justin-techsupport]

The computers in question are most often used on the internal company network but are also sometimes used from the users' home networks. Both Google and Dropbox should be business as the user accounts are centrally managed through each service's respective company admin panel.

Some of the affected users have had third party extensions installed in chrome (Grammarly as an example) but we have tried disabling all third party extensions during troubleshooting and that did not resolve the issue. Chrome isn't set up to block anything automatically that I know of. We deploy the browser software off-the-shelf so it's being used with whatever the default config is.

[Jay]

Since there could be account-specific issues preventing them from accessing their files while logged in using Google SSO, I'd recommend having them contact the support team directly using this link, while signed into their account, for the team to investigate the matter further.

[justin-techsupport · Accepted solution]

Incase anybody stumbles across this topic in the future, I have found the cause of the issue.

After extensive testing we determined that the the issue is caused by a combination of Google SSO, the Grammarly desktop application, and potentially the Grammarly web extension. The steps to reproduce the issue are as follows:

- On an unaffected macbook, open Google Chrome and sign into Dropbox through Google SSO

- Open a .gdoc file and confirm it's loading as intended

- Run Grammarly desktop and sign in through Google SSO

- From the Grammarly desktop, trigger Grammarly to open a new doc in the browser

- Attempt to load any .gdoc file, including reloading one that was already open and functioning

This will break Chrome's ability to load any .gdoc files moving forward and any attempts to do so freeze the browser completely, requiring it to be force quit.

Quitting the Grammarly desktop application immediately resolves the issue and .gdoc files load normally in Dropbox again. As of typing this, Grammarly support is looking into the issue and has advised to disable disable Grammarly desktop's integration with either Dropbox.com or Google Chrome entirely. The web extension still functions once the desktop app has been disabled/quit.