Unsaved changes to Dropbox - Google Docs, Sheets, Slides Error

Question

Hi there,

Like a few other people, I've also encountered a frequent problem inside of Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. At some point, ik looks like Google can't connect to Dropbox anymore to correctly save document changes. This especially is annoying if you want to duplicate a file, it will duplicate an older version, which can be tricky to check. Is this something that you can work on / figure out when this problem occurs / how to fix it? I think that it is related to the size of the document/sheet/slide, but not sure. My team and I really want te rely on this service, hope you can make it more stable!

Other topics related to the same problem.

* https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-files-folders/quot-Unsaved-changes-to-Dropbox-quot-error-message-when-editing/m-p/450400#M169502 
* Unsaved changes to dropbox

Greetings!

mono_o · Answer

My solution is to download the file as a Microsoft document (Docs, Sheets, Slides). Delete the original file in Dropbox and upload the local version. The error goes away as this is a brand new file as far as Dropbox is concerned.

Luc-FJ · Answer

Hi @buffywan !

Noticed the same in older documents of our team, also something that needs to be more clear that a slide deck can break like this if it is intended behaviour.

buffywan · Answer

Hi, just adding on to this post. I understand this is a known issue and doesn't seem like there is a solution as it is quite intermittent. Now whenever my team collaborates on a G Slide, I just hope that unsaved changes message doesn't show up. I initially thought it is fine since the only downside is we can't duplicate the file.

But I just learned something today. Over time, G slide will purge the other versions, loading only the last saved copy. So for example, my team worked on a rather large deck of slides in March this year for a presentation. Just opened that same deck today and it is the incomplete version. Fortunately I download ed PDF versions of the deck as a form of backup at certain intervals during the time we were working on it.

Hope this bug can be resolved someday!