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Forum Discussion
Refreshing screen on Excel and Word - Windows 7
I recently started having a problem with Excel where frequent screen refresh (about every 4 seconds) was interfering with work. The same thing was happening in Word.
After many hours of troubleshooting, an online community suggested Dropbox as the cuprit. I uninstalled Dropbox and the probem was cured. I reinstalled it and the problem returned.
Windows 7, Office 2007
Thanks for any advice
Hi all,
Many apologies as always for any delay in responding. We have some great engineers working on the Dropbox badge and one of them put together a fix that is included in this version:
Apologies for any inconvenience caused here. We're always keeping our eye out here, so as soon as we saw your reports, and the threads start to flair, we started investigating. The result of the investigation is a fix that is included in the above version.
Many thanks all for your participation here in the community, you help us make a better product.
Keep the ideas coming and keep highlighting anything you spot.
Ross S.
Ross_SDropbox Staff
Hi all,
Many apologies as always for any delay in responding. We have some great engineers working on the Dropbox badge and one of them put together a fix that is included in this version:
Apologies for any inconvenience caused here. We're always keeping our eye out here, so as soon as we saw your reports, and the threads start to flair, we started investigating. The result of the investigation is a fix that is included in the above version.
Many thanks all for your participation here in the community, you help us make a better product.
Keep the ideas coming and keep highlighting anything you spot.
Ross S.
This problem absolutely crushed our company -- laptops were not useable. Does this beta fix the problem and if yes, how soon until it gets rolled out to the masses? I am leary of installing beta software on 40+ machines.
- I had to disable the badge to fix the problem, but it seems to be working now. Running Win7 Ultimate on a Lenovo laptop.
I had disappearing dropdowns in every Office application and every type of dropdown, including font size, borders, shape fill, etc. This fix cured them all.
Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) popup menus - from autofilter dropdowns, right-click menus, and ribbon menu dropdowns - would disappear quickly - often in 1-4 seconds, too quickly to make a selection.
Before any change to the document, the popup menus would work fine. But, after the first unsaved change, the problem would appear.
After hours of exhaustive testing, I have conclusively isolated the problem to the Dropbox desktop client. When Dropbox desktop client is running, the problem is present; when it is not, the problem is gone. Pause syncing is not enough to clear the problem; I must quit the desktop client.
I suspect the auto-update to version 32.4.23, which was installed on my computer on Thursday, August 10, 2017, and that's when I started having the problem.
I noticed an old post from 2016-03-02, describing the same problem:
User: Robin E. https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/246229
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I've been running the same setup for years, with very little change in configuration, and no problem like this until now.
MacBook Pro (late 2015)
Windows 7 Ultimate running under Bootcamp
Microsoft Office 2010
Dropbox Business account
I found a workaround!
In Dropbox Preferences General,
Set Dropbox Badge to Never Show.
- Fixes it for me too - thanks
Switching off Dropbox worked for me after hours of head scratching. What annoys me is that when I googled for the problem, everyone was pointing at printer and display drivers. Even the MS support team didnt refer to Dropbox as being the problem.
I am not sure the category I selected is the correct one or not. I am not a power Drobox user and I have never used this forum before.
Our company recently started deploying Office365 which is using Office 2016.
I have a personal dropbox account, not a corporate one.
I started noticing that when I am using Office Suite Programs (WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, etc.) that "something" was stealing the focus. By that I mean, if I had a cell selected in EXCEL and RIGHT CLICKED to select an option, suddenly the context menu closed. I looked more closeliy and noticed that the "box" around and excel cell, was "flashing" every2 second or so. That seemed to go along with the "focus stealing" activity.
I started closing appications one at a time and when I closed DROPBOX, it stopped.
I have removed all references to DROPBOX within OFFICE and removed all addons to use DROPBOX.
I would like to keep DROPBOX running in the background without it stealing the focus from OFFICE SUITE programs, but the constant stealing the focus, makes using the applications almost useless.
For not I have to CLOSE DROPBOX when using OFFICE365 programs and then start it again when I am not using OFFICE.
Has anyone else seen this and is there a solution?
Thank you!
- Rich
Super User II
Seems to do the trick for me. Thank you.
I have been using the desktop app to sync with my Windows PC's for years. This issue with the focus "stealing" just started for me on Friday last week (8/11/17). I am using Office 2010 and this was happening in Excel and Word, all files, whether sync'd w/ Dropbox, local HDD, or network share drive.
I uninstalled the Dropbox program this morning, and the problem disappeared...
Re-installed the Dropbox program this afternoon, and the problem was immediately back...
This issue renders Excel and Word practically unusable with focus being stolen every second or less. This occurs regardless of the sync/program status (i.e. I disabled it, and did nothing to fix it)...
Although I was very happy to see someone else having this issue, it is disappointing. I hope it's resolved quickly.
-B'
Problem started for me on the same date, Friday (8/11/2017). I have uninstalled Dropbox and the problem was removed.
With Dropbox installed, Word and Excel are unusable as all menus disappear as soon as they're opened.
Dropbox 1.3.65.1
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Office 365 ProPlus (Version 1707 - Build 8326.2076 Click-toRun)
Excel 2016 (16.0.8626.2076) 32-bit
I also have 3 users with this issue. All running either Office 2013 or Office 2016 on Windows 7. Disabling dropbox at startup or killing it fixed thier issues.
Me too - glad I'm not alone. Started on the 11th August.
I have Win 7 with Office 365 version of Office 2016 and DB 32.4.23
Have reinstalled Office & DB and, like the other poster, found it was DB causing the issue.
Hi,
I'm the network admin for the company I work for. In the past few days I've had 3 people complain about Microsoft Office 2013 cursor to "flicker"
In Excel, if you have a cell highlighted, you can see the box flicker as well.
I thought it was something with Office until we realized these three people have dropbox installed. I'm sure the free version if that makes a difference.
If I exit Dropbox, the flickering in Office stops.
None of these people have the options box checked to show the dropbox download in Office.
This seemed to start after a Dropbox update last week I believe.
Anyone have a fix other than uninstall Dropbox?
Thanks,
Jake- MarkTry disabling the Dropbox Badge within the Dropbox preferences.
- RichI've merged several threads that were all dealing with Dropbox Badge issues. Any other threads will be redirected here as well.
- Jane
- Dropbox needs to fix this issue. Shutting off the "Badge", while it fixes the immediate problem, removes the functionality of what the badge is there to resolve: preventing two people from changing a file simultaneously and creating a "conflicted copy".
- I turn off Dropbox while I am working with excel or Word. I hope the Dropbox programmers will take notice that Dropbox should not steel the focus on the menus.
- Jane
Hey all,
I'm just updating the thread here to let you know that we're working on having this fixed soon and I'll make sure to send more information once amended.
Thanks for bearing with our team, I hope you have a great week ahead!
- Ross_S
Hi lensilva and all,
Thanks for highlighting this.
We've investigated here and it looks like we have a slight bug at our end. I'll update here once the fix is live in a beta or stable version and let you all know what the version number is.
Thanks again all for highlighting us. In the mean time, as a work around, you can indeed disable the Dropbox badge which should resolve this.
Many thanks and happy Dropboxing!
When the desktop app is active all MS Office 2016 applications suffer witht he dropdown menus disappearing prematurely. Error started occuring on 16 or 17 Aug 2017 (following a DB update?) My only workaround is to shut down the DB desktop app.
- Sanchez
- Ross_S
Hi all,
Many apologies as always for any delay in responding. We have some great engineers working on the Dropbox badge and one of them put together a fix that is included in this version:
Apologies for any inconvenience caused here. We're always keeping our eye out here, so as soon as we saw your reports, and the threads start to flair, we started investigating. The result of the investigation is a fix that is included in the above version.
Many thanks all for your participation here in the community, you help us make a better product.
Keep the ideas coming and keep highlighting anything you spot.
Ross S.
Found this workaround on another DB forum entry. It fixed my problem.
gregvydra
gregvydra Level 2 Level 2
I found a workaround!
In Dropbox Preferences General,
Set Dropbox Badge to Never Show.Hi,
When Dropbox desktop app is running (the icon is in the taskbar, nothing else in particular is open), I have issues with the mouse pointer. E.g. when selecting colors from a dropdown in MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint, the dropdowns suddenly close and I am unable to select a color.
The problem is solved by quitting Dropbox (Taskbar symbol -> Settings symbol -> "Dropbox beenden" in German).
This seems to be Dropbox "competing for focus". Is this problem known at all?
