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Forum Discussion
DropBox won't open files
Recently DropBox started saying it can't open the files I have uploaded onto it, or that have been shared with me by others. I have plenty of extra storage space, so that can't be the problem. This...
I'm disappointed to see there was no reply when I answered your questions. I have apparently solved the problem, but I am quite disappointed in how Dropbox seems to handle files. I looked at the history of the files in question and found that I did indeed modify them, unintentionally. And that was the case even for files I had previously deleted! It turns out that when I got my new computer and moved all my files from the G drive on the old computer to the D drive on my new computer, it corrupted the files in my Dropbox list in File Explorer on the new computer...even though most of the files there had been copied / pasted into those folders on the original computer.....so apparently they weren't really pasted in, just a link to the original location. While thus corrupted, the file names still showed in File Explorer so I had not checked to see if they opened. Had I done so, I would have seen that they do not, and thus the versions on the Dropbox website were also corrupted. Note again that even the files shared from fully 40 other users in my Dropbox were also corrupted by me getting a new computer, even though I had previously deleted their files!!! Those shared files were also corrupted in the Dropbox accounts of all those 40 users!!! Obviously they were not happy with me. Fortunately I was able to Restore all the files to their original state from before my changes. That got everyone working again. Lessorn learned on how Dropbox apparently works. My mistake, but still, I don't think Dropbox should have taken it that far, especially on deleted files.
Thanks for your effort on this. The files are between about 1 - 6 MB. Note I have opened all of them just fine in the past, some I uploaded myself and others were share with me. Multiple people in my group are having the same issue. And one more bit of evidence....when I put a new photo on my DropBox account today, I can preview it just fine. All the files are the same format. So what changed that I can no longer preview files that used to work for me? Thanks again for your thoughts.
Megan
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHey TomJ2433, you mentioned that some of these files have been shared with you.
Is there any chance that someone accidentally renamed the content, and removed the file extensions? Can you send me a screenshot of an example file name, and the error you get on your end?
First, I have attached screen shots as requested, showing a normal .jpg file, plus its modification history and the error statement when I try to preview it. I did not intentionally modify these files on Nov 4 as it says I did. However, I did move my original photo files to a new computer about that time. My photos were all moved from the G drive on the old computer to the D drive on the new one. Hummm. Could that be the problem??? Would DropBox know that? Are the files on DropBox actually still linked to those on my computer even after I put them on DropBox??? And for most of the shared files, I had actually deleted them from my DropBox so the new pc wouldn't even have them on its system....note I did resurrect them from my deleted folders during this current exercise to see what happened to them. (Suppose I delete photos from Pictures folder on my computer? Do they then go away on from what I had previously loaded on DropBox? I wouldn't have thought so.) Anyway, I find that if I Restore the individual photos on Dropbox to the earlier (pre Nov 4) version, they do come back ok. However, there are a lot of photos to individually Restore. I thought I could restore a whole folder or even all my files, but DropBox seems to steer me to ""Rewind" which apparently costs a lot of $$ for my Basic account. True? Any alternatives?
So that's the latest from my end. Thanks for any help you can give me.
I'm disappointed to see there was no reply when I answered your questions. I have apparently solved the problem, but I am quite disappointed in how Dropbox seems to handle files. I looked at the history of the files in question and found that I did indeed modify them, unintentionally. And that was the case even for files I had previously deleted! It turns out that when I got my new computer and moved all my files from the G drive on the old computer to the D drive on my new computer, it corrupted the files in my Dropbox list in File Explorer on the new computer...even though most of the files there had been copied / pasted into those folders on the original computer.....so apparently they weren't really pasted in, just a link to the original location. While thus corrupted, the file names still showed in File Explorer so I had not checked to see if they opened. Had I done so, I would have seen that they do not, and thus the versions on the Dropbox website were also corrupted. Note again that even the files shared from fully 40 other users in my Dropbox were also corrupted by me getting a new computer, even though I had previously deleted their files!!! Those shared files were also corrupted in the Dropbox accounts of all those 40 users!!! Obviously they were not happy with me. Fortunately I was able to Restore all the files to their original state from before my changes. That got everyone working again. Lessorn learned on how Dropbox apparently works. My mistake, but still, I don't think Dropbox should have taken it that far, especially on deleted files.
Thanks for this info. I've been struggling with this same problem.
If I double-click on any "older" (aka, last accessed 3 months or before) file in my dropbox folder on my C: drive, it gives me an error that it is not available. But, I can access all these files from mobile, web and other synced PC devices. I tried to open a sound file in VLC and it's warning included a path that looked like this:
"VLC is unable to open the MRL 'file:///😧/Users/miked/Dropbox/... That's when I realized, even though I'm accessing the file from my C: drive, it's looking for it on the 😧 drive which is an old installation from before. I had copied the 😧 partition to the C: drive partition using a 3rd party tool and also reinstalled Dropbox after that. It's configuration shows that it's pointing to the C: drive location and all the files that I create there do sync properly. I can open these newer files. So, everything "seems" to be synced to the cloud and accessible, I just can't open them on this PC.
So, I think I'm going remove Dropbox completely from this system. Delete both folders from both hard drives. I might even see if there are Registry entries for Dropbox that I can also remove. Then reinstall totally from fresh. I hope that works. This has been so frustrating, trying to work around this.
ONE workaround that I did discover... Is if I open the Dropbox system tray app, the first item in the history is my attempt to open the file. If I choose "Open" from that history item, it will open on my desktop. But, now I'm not sure it it opened it from the 😧 or the C: drive. What a mess.
