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We can't open files from a shared folder, as we receive errors

A user has a DropBox shared folder that is used by everyone within an organization. When we try to access, for example, an Excel file from the shared folder in File Explorer, it tries to open in the Excel app but it freezes, never loads, and gives message (Excel is not responding) in which case, we use task manager to force quit Excel.

Even during times that it may open (very rarely), it gives us the following error:

Error 1: Microsoft Excel cannot access the file '.....'. There are several possible reasons: The file name or path does not exist, The file is being used by another program, The workbook you are trying to save has the same name as a currently open workbook.

So far, I have tried:

-Uninstall / re-install DropBox app.

-Sync status shows as 'All files are up to date'

-Restart laptop.

-Clear DropBox cache

-Turn on Selective Sync

-(The files are able to be opened from DropBox Online & if we download the individual files before opening.)

We've opened a ticket with DropBox Support for the past month (about 3 tickets opened) but nobody is following up with us regarding this.

Any help would be appreciated!

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Thank you all for following up with me!

The issue has been resolved, we noticed that it was an authentication issue when opening Excel.

In case this issue arises for other users:

We uninstalled office apps and re-installed.

Then we opened the DropBox files from the Excel app itself instead of trying to open from the team shared folder in DropBox location (C: Drive). This brought up the authentication notification, which we re-authenticated.

After re-authenticating, we were able to open directly from the DropBox location without getting the error.

Hopefully this helps other users!

All comments

Jay

Hi @KS , thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Just for clarification, when you say that everyone is accessing the shared folder, is this as part of a Dropbox team folder, or an actual shared folder?

Is it possible that another user is also working on the Excel file when another user is trying to access it?

Are the files marked as available offline, or online-only in Explorer/Finder?

This will help me to assist further!

Hi Jay, thank you for getting back to me.

To answer your questions,

-This is a DropBox team folder.

-We checked with the individuals in the organization, and none of them have the same files open at the time of testing. They have about 500,000 files in total, and no matter which document we open, the same error message appears.

-The files are marked as Online-Only with Selective Sync turned on. We noticed that when we make files available offline, due to the number of files they have in that shared folder, it takes up too much space on their hard drive.

Let me know if you need any additional info! Thanks.

Hannah

Hey @KS , thanks for the update.

Can you please give us the number for your most recent ticket, so we can take a look?

Hi Hannah,

The most recent ticket: Ticket #25037307

Nancy

Thanks for that ticket number, @KS! I can see that one of our support agents had sent you an email at some point, but because there was no reply, the ticket was closed automatically by the system after that.

However, regarding your previous post, can you please clarify what you mean when saying that the files are marked as online-only with selective sync on? In general, selective sync is a feature that completely removes folders from the desktop app to save up hard drive space, so the files shouldn’t be showing locally in that scenario.

Does the issue persist when the files are available offline instead?

Thank you all for following up with me!

The issue has been resolved, we noticed that it was an authentication issue when opening Excel.

In case this issue arises for other users:

We uninstalled office apps and re-installed.

After re-authenticating, we were able to open directly from the DropBox location without getting the error.

Hopefully this helps other users!

Nancy

Glad to hear that, @KS, and thank you for sharing what solved the issue for you; this way, other users can benefit from your post, as well.

We’ll be here, in case you need something else.

Theresa

Hi @kS and welcome back to the Dropbox Community. I am happy to see you got access to the shared folder after reinstalling the external application for the file. Thanks for returning to let us know you've got it sorted 😉, it's people like you who keep our Community so vibrant.

On a separate note, I’m Theresa, one of the Community Managers here at Dropbox. 👩‍💻 I’d love to hear how you use Dropbox in your daily life and sure if you're open to sharing, I’m all ears👂.

I’m always fascinated by different workflows. Who knows? Your insights might lead to helpful tips to boost productivity or even spark ideas we can share with our internal team.

T 😺 (Dropbox Community Manager)

furqanhamid

We've faced a similar issue with shared files in our Dropbox workspace too — especially Excel files freezing or throwing errors when opened directly from File Explorer. What worked for us was disabling Dropbox Smart Sync and ensuring the files were fully available offline. Also, renaming conflicted copies helped in a few cases.