We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.

Forum Discussion

GillW's avatar
GillW
Explorer | Level 4
4 years ago

Corrupted Word Documents

I am at my wit's end!  I didn't realise that DropBox would corrupt files.  I now have several Word documents in a folder that I need for my course work assessment which are no longer Word documents a...
Preview
Previewing
Share
Shared Files
Sort and Preview
  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    4 years ago
    No worries, GillW!

    Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Megan's avatar
Megan
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

Hey holpolshuf, let's jump right in! 

 

If you try to use these steps, in order to download the files from your Dropbox account online to your device and then preview them there, do they preview like they normally would? 

 

Also, what are the syncing icons that you see next to these files when you check them within your Dropbox folder? 

 

Feel free to send any screenshots our way. 

 

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

holpolshuf's avatar
holpolshuf
Explorer | Level 4
3 months ago

When I download the file, the preview is fine and I am able to open and save it to my Dropbox folder on my desktop. The corrupted Word and PDF documents all have x's in the lower left hand corner of the document in the folder.  Do I just need to download all of the corrupt documents again?  And why did that happen in the first place?

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    3 months ago

    Hey @holpolshuf, do you use any other cloud services along with Dropbox?

     

    This is a Windows icon and not a Dropbox icon. Keep in mind that while in File Explorer, a gray “X” icon can appear in a file or folder in your Dropbox folder sometimes.

     

    It indicates that your file or folder may not be syncing with Dropbox.

     

    To fix this, please try the steps in this article about fixing syncing issues in Dropbox. If that doesn’t fix it, you can also contact Microsoft support.

  • holpolshuf's avatar
    holpolshuf
    Explorer | Level 4
    3 months ago

    I sometimes use Google Drive, but none of the corrupted files are in Drive or came from Drive.  There were no disk issues, so moving on to attempt all the other fixes.  

  • Chloemaryland's avatar
    Chloemaryland
    New member | Level 2
    3 months ago

     

    I have Word documents in Dropbox on my desktop that when I attempt to open them, I receive this message:

    Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt. Try one or more of the following:  Open and Repair the file. Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.

    I can't figure out how to repair them. The same files on my phone in Dropbox are fine. Help, please!

  • holpolshuf's avatar
    holpolshuf
    Explorer | Level 4
    3 months ago

    You should read Megan's suggestions to me since I posted the exact same issue.

About View, download, and export

Need support with viewing, downloading, and exporting files and folders from your Dropbox account? Find help 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!