File could not be opened on my new mac mini m1

[dlund]

Hi everyone 🙂 

I hope someone can help me - I just got a new mac mini m1, and downloaded dropbox, and installed it. I chose to have to keep the files online to save my space, but now I get the message that the files could not be opened, and I can't figure out why. 

I hope someone can help me solve this 🙂 

kind regards Diana

[Mark]

Try seeing if you can right click and turn to save locally first?

[dlund]

Thank you, but that would not really save the long-term problem, of saving the space on my local drive - It should be working without should it not? 

[Mark]

It should but thats why I asked to troubleshoot....

[dlund]

ah ok 🙂 

It works if I download it first 🙂

[Rich]

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@dlund wrote:

... that would not really save the long-term problem, of saving the space on my local drive ...

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That's not how it works. Even if you don't mark it as Local first, Dropbox still needs to download the file back to your computer before it can be opened. It can't be opened directly from the cloud.

What should happen is that when you try to open a file that is marked as Online-only, Dropbox should download the file, mark it as Local, and then your application should open it. When you're done with the file you would need to mark it as Online-only again.

It sounds like your application isn't giving Dropbox enough time to download the file before it tries to open it, or Dropbox isn't getting the signal that it needs to download the file.

[dlund]

ok, makes sense, but what to do about it? 🙂 

[Clar2]

I have the same problem, on a MacBook Air M1. It happens if I try to open any dropbox file from the Finder.