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Forum Discussion
Unspecified Error trying to open word, excel or PowerPoint files
Hello,
I have a fairly new laptop that was purchased in March that I use for all my personal and professional work. I started a new gig with a company in June and was given access to their Dropbox...
Hi NGraham1!
I understand you are not able to open certain files via the Dropbox desktop app.
Is there any chance the files are currently Smart Synced to 'online-only'? If so, there will be a gray cloud icon by the files, and you can right-click on them and set their Smart Sync setting to 'Local'.
Alternatively, some applications have limits on the file paths they can access (for example, Excel has a limit of 218 total characters), and so shortening the entire name/path to the file may help.
You can check all of our sync icons and possible syncing issues here, too, for reference.
If the file is local and the file length is not the issue, can you copy the file to outside of the Dropbox folder and see if you can open it then? This will help determine if this is syncing issue or a file-specific one.
Let me know what you find, thanks!
Celeste
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi NGraham1!
I understand you are not able to open certain files via the Dropbox desktop app.
Is there any chance the files are currently Smart Synced to 'online-only'? If so, there will be a gray cloud icon by the files, and you can right-click on them and set their Smart Sync setting to 'Local'.
Alternatively, some applications have limits on the file paths they can access (for example, Excel has a limit of 218 total characters), and so shortening the entire name/path to the file may help.
You can check all of our sync icons and possible syncing issues here, too, for reference.
If the file is local and the file length is not the issue, can you copy the file to outside of the Dropbox folder and see if you can open it then? This will help determine if this is syncing issue or a file-specific one.
Let me know what you find, thanks!
Hi Celeste2,
Thank you so much for your response. Turns out my files were set to sync online only that was causing the error to show up. I'm in the process of synching the folder that I work in everyday and see that I'm able to open most of the files now. I also agree there might be a few files where the file name can be shortened.
Thank you again for your help.
Nicolette
