You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

Bharper's avatar
Bharper
Explorer | Level 3
7 months ago

Dropbox pulling incomplete excel documents

Hello,

 

One of my employees are having an issue with their laptop concerning excel and Dropbox.

 

We use Dropbox for our field technicians to pull excel spreadsheets to complete a daily report. This spread sheet is a template that they add their data into, and then save to another folder within their Dropbox.

 

They've contacted me that sometimes, while trying to open the spreadsheet, only half of the document is filled, the last couple columns of the sheet are missing entirely. I did look at their saved versions of the sheet, and some of them are missing data as he states.

 

They do work in a remote area and I know their signal is spotty at best so I figured it was just data lost from the poor reception. I pulled up the exact form from my work internet and the spreadsheet was complete. He insists that it is an issue with the computer, but I tested it on the exact computer he's complaining about when he brought it back.

 

Am I correct on my assumption that the cause is just a faulty internet connection? Or could it be cause by an underlying issue, be it with the computer or Dropbox itself?

  • Hey Bharper. thanks for the reply.

     

    While there's no way to manually refresh specific files through Dropbox, the only way to make sure that the updates are synced across all computers accessing the files, is to make sure the Dropbox app is syncing properly.

     

    This can be done by checking the sync status of the app, which can be found if you hover over the Dropbox icon in the system tray.

     

    The sync status will show you if the files are up to date or if there are any sync errors.

     

    If the app is 'up to date', all changes should be synced across all devices accessing the files and online.

     

    Let me know if you have any questions!

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hi there Bharper - thanks for joining our Community and sorry to hear about this.

     

    It sounds like the Dropbox desktop app wasn't fully synced when your colleagues checked the mentioned files.

     

    Can you confirm that you're all using the Dropbox app to sync your edits and that you can all see the file normally on the website? 

     

    Let us know more and we'll take it from there.

    • Bharper's avatar
      Bharper
      Explorer | Level 3

      Hi there @Walter,

       

      We use the folders that show up on our file explorer on the operating system (Windows 10) whenever we login to the app. The document then opens directly onto our Microsoft suite installed on the computer. Is there a way to manually refresh the affected files from within the file explorer on Windows 10?

       

      Our employees often work in very remote areas with little to no cell reception. Even if the connection is stable, download speeds are extremely low. 

      • Hannah's avatar
        Hannah
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Hey Bharper. thanks for the reply.

         

        While there's no way to manually refresh specific files through Dropbox, the only way to make sure that the updates are synced across all computers accessing the files, is to make sure the Dropbox app is syncing properly.

         

        This can be done by checking the sync status of the app, which can be found if you hover over the Dropbox icon in the system tray.

         

        The sync status will show you if the files are up to date or if there are any sync errors.

         

        If the app is 'up to date', all changes should be synced across all devices accessing the files and online.

         

        Let me know if you have any questions!

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!