Word documents corrupting or missing after working on them and saving them to Dropbox

[II11]

When I open a Word document, work on it and save it to my Dropbox, it disappears, and I cannot reopen it. It is not in my deleted items/trash, nor have I moved it. I get the following error message:

I also sometimes get the word document "renaming" itself to a alphanumeric combination whilst I have it open; see the picture below:

When I try and open the renamed wordoc, I get the following error message:

I lost five years of work in one of the files. 

Please help!

[Walter]

Hi there @II11,  sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Could it be that your file's path is very long, thus causing this error from Windows? 

As for the files you notice being created, I'd assume that these are temp files that are created as a fail-safe while you're syncing them. 

Do you get the same results if you do this with syncing paused or with the Dropbox desktop app completely closed? 

When it comes to your lost work on one of those files, could you check your events page or the file's version history to see if you can restore from there?

Let us know of any updates!

[II11]

Hi Walter,

The file length is not very long (<20 characters)

This happens when DropBox desktop app is completely closed. Not sure about syncing being paused.

There are no files in my Events section, nor can I do anything about version history as the file is completely gone - so there is no "file version" to go back on. This is hugely concerning.

Please help. 

[Megan]

Hey @II11, does that happen with files that exist only in your Dropbox folder?

What happens when you move them to a different path, and try to edit them there?

[II11]

This only happens when saving the word document to dropbox.

[Nancy]

Hi @II11. 

If you haven’t already, can you also move a file to the Dropbox root folder on your computer and try to edit it from there? Does the same issue persist, if you do this?