Unable to open files synced to computer

[Clangdon]

Hi - 

I've been using dropbox for a few  months now and it has been aweseome - 

I've got a distributed team of 10 people working across the country - and we've been sharing files on Dropbox without issue until a couple of days ago. 

Suddnely, and for reasons I don't understand, no one is able to open files.  I thought it was me or my machine or my software .... but I'm getting the same reports from across the country that people are no longer able to open files stored on Dropbox.  

Everyone is getting the same error message and calling ME to fix the problem and i don't know what to do - 

The file “PDLogo_AnalyticsTag.png” could not be opened.

It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize.

Everythting was working fine until Friday or Saturday - when suddently file-opening stopped workiong. 

Please help !!!!!

[kajakiem]

I don't have plus account paired with a Business. Should I still do the same?

[Fiona]

Yes please!

[marshallajonesj]

Hahah. This is NOT a solution.

[Fiona]

Hi @marshallajonesj!

Have a nice week. 

Sorry to hear the suggestions here did not work for you. Let me know which of the steps offered here you've tried and I will help you with the next steps to the solution. 

Thanks! 

[Josekun]

Why does Dropbox says SOLVED. It is NOT solved. It keeps happening. LIARS

A company you can't trust. 

[aerouser]

For anyone who makes it to the end of this thread and is still stuck, here is what I did to fix this problem on Mac.

In my case this seems to be related to the "Smart Sync" feature being partially active, even though I did not turn it on and it clearly stated in the Dropbox app that Smart Sync was turned off.

Even though I did not turn it on, Smart Sync was creating empty files with the same names as my real files instead of actually downloading them. When you double-click on these files Dropbox is supposed to understand what they are, and then automatically download, or "Smart Syncs", the file from the server. However, since Smart Sync was not actually turned on it gets all confused and just sees them as corrupted files.

To fix this I had to:

1) Turn Smart Sync on - This required me to allow it in the Mac security center and then reboot my system for some reason

2) Change all of my folders from "Smart Sync" to local by right clicking on them and changing the smart sync setting

This seems to be working now and I can use preview to look at images etc. Hopefully it works for you and Dropbox can track down where this bug is ultimately coming from.