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
    2023-02-28T20:39:41+00:00

    Your last sentence puzzled me: "Ignore them and I guess they will go away, they did for me." I *think* you mean that you should not have gone thru the upload to OneDrive only to have to undo it again. Yes?

    The ChatGPT says:

    "The brown box icons in the left bottom corner of your files on OneDrive in Windows typically indicate that the files have not yet been fully synced to the cloud.

    When you add a file or make changes to a file on OneDrive, it first gets synced to the OneDrive folder on your computer, and then it gets uploaded to the cloud. During the syncing process, a small brown box icon with two arrows rotating in a circle may appear on the file or folder icon to indicate that the file is being synced.

    Once the file has been fully synced to the cloud, the brown box icon should disappear, and the file should have a green checkmark icon to indicate that it is synced and up-to-date.

    If the brown box icon remains on the file icon for an extended period of time, it could indicate that there is an issue with the syncing process, such as a slow or unstable internet connection, or a problem with the OneDrive app on your computer. In this case, you may want to check your internet connection and try restarting the OneDrive app to see if that resolves the issue."

    I don't know how accurate that answer is, but for me, once I had checked the "Always keep on this device", then because of that, I ran out of disk space, so I unchecked the "Always keep on this device", recovered the disk space, then the Brown icons disappeared, so if what ChatGPT is referring to is the same thing it would indicate that given long enough they would have gone away.

    I just don't know why so many files on the desktop were synching with Onedrive, they were not new files and they were not ones that I had recently accessed.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-03-13T00:54:38+00:00

    GREETINGS,

    IT DID NOT WORK AT ALL.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-03-23T04:06:26+00:00

    Awesome Thanks!

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-03-24T19:14:20+00:00

    I did this and now as I look at my desktop, each file is alternating between the file box, a check mark, and a green arrow.

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