What are these brown box icons in left bottom corner of my files??

Anonymous
2022-03-07T21:29:56+00:00

Does anyone know where these small brown box icons came from and what they mean?? I suddenly have these little brown icons (looks like a small file box) on most of my files, Word, pdf, photos, etc. I've googled the daylights out of this and apparently lots of folks have the same question but no one has an answer. I hasn't affected my ability to open files but it's really annoying! (see pic below) Does it have something to do with my upgrade to Windows 11?

Thanks!

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2022-04-23T00:35:08+00:00

Had this exact same issue today. The resolution was quick no reinstall. I'm on Win11, so perhaps that was a plus in this scenario. Here's the fix that worked for me:

  1. Open windows explorer <windows-key + e>
  2. If you're using OneDrive you should see something like "OneDrive - Personal" within the left-hand pane. If so, Right-Click to access the context-menu.
  3. You should see the menu-item: "Always keep on this device", select this.
  4. Recheck your desktop; no more brown boxes, yay!

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-20T12:52:43+00:00

    It did not work. They were still there even after I rebooted the computer. Never had this problem with Windows 10. As soon as Microsoft asked me to upgrade to Windows 11 is when this started. I should have never done it .

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-25T22:55:02+00:00

    These boxes started for me sometime in the last week or two. They are only on Dropbox files, and in a specific Folder in a company shared Dropbox. For example I have a personal installation of Dropbox installed and the boxes are not there. In the company installation of Dropbox, the boxes are only on files in the subfolders of one main folder, not the entire company Dropbox.

    Also, I can access all of these files. I don't have any issues opening them and none of them are corrupt.

    btw I don't even have One Drive installed.

    I did just find this resource but I have not tried it yet.

    https://bestwindowssoftware.net/brown-icon-box-files-windows-11

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-26T16:44:16+00:00

    I found a solution for anyone that this is happening to on Dropbox. If you right click on the Dropbox folder in windows explorer and click "make available offline" it will get rid of the brown box and the green check mark will return. Dropbox will then sync everything again and eventually the brown box will disappear. Granted I think this takes up more hard drive space but my HD is big enough to not worry about it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-26T18:12:31+00:00

    I'm afraid I'll lose everything if I monkey around with it. I believe they duplicate themselves somehow. They're all over in different places

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