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Forum Discussion
Word crashing when saving to Dropbox folders
I use Word almost every day for creating simple documents, and for the most part it works fine. Yesterday it suddenly began crashing when I try to save a new document in a Dropbox folder. Step...
RubixVi Sanchez stephersla Jay Anastasios
I have now solved the issue. It was because the Dropbox folder was not in the default location. In my example, I had the Dropbox folder on my desktop as mentioned below AND I was using iCloud storage.
iCloud moves the Desktop Folder (and a few other folders) away from local storage to an iCloud location. If the Dropbox folder is in a folder that is being kept in iCloud, sometime it works, sometimes it fails, sometimes it apparently works, but strange things fail, e.g. Word refusing to save / open a Dropbox folder. The state of play can change with any OS update.
See:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/mac-osx-sierra-compatibility
https://eclecticlight.co/2016/12/01/macos-sierra-and-dropbox-have-the-problems-resolved-yet/
To solve the issue of MS Office apps crashing when saving to a Dropbox folder, I had to move my Dropbox folder back to its default location, in my user Home folder:
Moving my Dropbox folder back to default location
If your Dropbox configuration fits the scenario described in the previous section, we will ask you to move your Dropbox folder back to the default location. Selecting the Move option will automatically complete this action. Selecting Cancel will stop Dropbox file sync until you resume sync and move your Dropbox folder back to its default location.
You can also manually move your Dropbox folder back to its default location:
- Click the Dropbox icon in your system tray or menu bar.
- Click the gear icon.
- Click Preferences….
- Open the Account tab.
- Click the dropdown beside Dropbox location.
- Select Other…
- Open the Applications list.
- Click the Applications dropdown, and select your hard drive.
- Open the Users folder.
- Select your computer username (it will likely have a "home" icon beside it).
- Click Select.
- Confirm the move by clicking Move.
RedTomato wrote:
Hi AgentJay, interesting question.
Chrome, TextEdit, Photoshop, Pages, Photos etc all open and save to my Dropbox folders and sub-folders, no problem. All file operations work fine.
Word and Excel both crash when navigating to Dropbox folders and sub-folders in the Save dialog.
If I open Office documents from within the Dropbox folders, they open fine. If I make a change and press Save, they save fine. (Pressing Save does not open a Save location dialog). If I press 'Save As ..' then Word / Excel tries to open the File dialog and immediately crashes.
If I open Word or Excel, and select 'Open File..' and navigate to a Dropbox folder, they immediately crash.
I hope that's some help. My Dropbox folder at the moment is on my desktop, which became an iCloud folder when I activated iCloud optimised storage a few months ago. I did wonder if that would cause issues, but it has been working fine the last few months. iCloud does not touch any files in Dropbox (they are marked with a crossed out cloud in Finder).
It would be a good idea to completely uninstall/reinstall dropbox and unlink/relink account.
I say this because you mention that you recently installed some Mac updates.
Therefore the different layers of updates one over the other might cause the problem.
If after reinstalling/relinking dropbox the problem still persists please let us know.
Unlinked & uninstalled DropBox, restarted, reinstalled, relinked. Problem still persists sorry.
