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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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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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204 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-07-13T02:49:02+00:00

    such a big help, thank you for your service 💝💝💝

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-07-20T14:49:04+00:00

    Same question here !! -.-"

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-07-20T14:50:21+00:00

    But, what it is ?

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-07-20T15:04:04+00:00

    Make sure you are signed in onto one drive. Otherwise nothing and I mean nothing works. Microsoft does NOT understand how to talk to non-computerized people. If you see One Drive-personal in the left column of explorer it does NOT mean you are signed into One Drive. It’s insane. Microsoft does not know how to fix this. After they took all my embroidery files screwed them all up and sent them back onto my computer into different folders so I could not find those embroidery files that must work together I was in tears. And the Dell computer is incapable of performing a file search on the computer after Microsoft has done its damage. Both companies should be put out of business!

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