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Forum Discussion
Can't open PDF files with new beta on my mac
Issue is that the file info says open with Dropbox, not Adobe. If I change back to Adobe then it opens. (Or if I open it from inside Adobe.) But I have hundreds of PDFs that now have the wrong app to...
Hi everyone,
Thanks for reporting this, and sorry for the inconvenience. We think we have a good idea of what is causing the issue, and we're looking into a fix.
In the meantime, the following workaround might help:- Open a Terminal window.
- Run the following command:
xattr -drv com.apple.LaunchServices.OpenWith ~/Library/CloudStorage/DropboxThis command will remove the custom "Open With" settings for all files in your Dropbox folder, including the incorrect/broken setting that is forcing some files to open with Dropbox.
It's possible that Finder won't notice the change right away, so you might need to relaunch it for that to take effect:
- Hold Control + Option and click on the Finder icon in the Dock.
- Select "Relaunch".
Thanks for the reply, Megan. I mean that when I double click a pdf or jpg to normally open it from the Dropbox folder in a Mac finder window, the icon quickly expands as if the document is going to open a second later, but it never does. From that finder window, I must right click on the icon to open up another menu and tell it to open with Adobe Acrobat in order to get it to open. A simple double click that's worked for decades no longer gets the file open.
I'm trying to replicate the dialog box that that tells me that it won't open because the file is from an unidentified developer, but it won't show me that right now.
I've identified something else that's happening which I think is the root problem. When I right click a pdf and select "Get Info," the application that shows to be the one that's trying to open the pdf is Dropbox, not Adobe Acrobat. The same happens when I try and open a Word document stored on Dropbox. When I click the Dropbox selection, other apps appear that I can choose to be the default app to use for pdfs. Acrobat is listed and it surprisingly says, "default" next to it.... yet when I look at the Get Info box, "Dropbox" is already populated as the app it wants to use to open the file. Then, when I change it to open all files like that (meaning all files with the extension ".pdf"), it doesn't do that. I have to go into each individual file, open its Get Info menu, and tell it to use Acrobat to open it if it's a pdf or Preview to open it if it's a jpg.
The bottom line is that Dropbox really, really wants to be the app to open all my files even though Preview is the default jpg viewer and Acrobat is the default pdf viewer. That's despite the fact that I'm setting my preferences to make other apps the default to open those files.
I reported this problem weeks ago and have just been on to the machine I'm running the Beta on and was amazed when I clicked a few PDF's in Dropbocx folder in Finder and hey presto, they opened! Wow, it is fixed I thought. Then I tried an Excel doc, which opened in Dropbox.com, NOT Excel. Get Info>Set Default App to Excel etc...
Low and behold nothing happened and I'm back to square one. MS Docs only open in Dropbox.com (not what I want, I want them to open in the native MS Apps on my Mac and Adobe docs don't open at all... the icon quickly expands as if the document is going to open a second later, but it never does.
Very slow progress DB! I've been a user for as long as I can remember Cloud File Storage being a thing and you were always streets ahead of the competition but this Beta is a mess.
- Couple of community managers emailed me privately and in email since last week the reply is “ our engineers are working on it”
So basically dropbox just wants the query raisers from this forum, so the more people do not come to know the problem on this platform.
Since last 4 weeks dropbox is not able to find solution, i believe dropbox just made a unstable version for latest mac os Hi Emmet
I have detailed the issue extensively on this thread. There are now at least half a dozen other posts detailing the same issue, and there are a significant amount of users commenting on these posts. I'm not quite sure what 'reaching out to me' directly is going to achieve, but if you want to, please feel free to contact me.
Hi Emmet -- I am experiencing essentially the same issue as Burnt-On detailed so comprehensively here, and would also appreciate some outreach. I'm not sure how I can put this more clearly: The issue essentially makes Dropbox unusable in the way I've come to rely on it in my workflow. It's a little disconcerting that DB doesn't seem to have addressed it in the last few months.
So there is a fix from a dropboxer for the "open with" issue (you should restart Finder after applying these commands):
xattr -drv com.apple.LaunchServices.OpenWith ~/Library/CloudStorage/DropboxThis is just resetting the metadata, and so for issues with spurious quarantines I would think something like:
xattr -drv com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/CloudStorage/DropboxAt least my errors are currently fixed...
