Files have a brown box on their icon and dont open in Windows 11

What is going on here? There is no information anywhere so it obviously isnt a problem for everyone.

Most of my files stored on Dropbox now have a small brown file box icon on the lower left corner of the main icon for all MS Office files. They open perfectly well on the phone and a laptop running Windows 10 but not on my laptop running Windows 11.

I get an error message saying the program cant open it because the file is unsupported or may be corrupt.

Why the **** do they release an OS that doesn't work with their own programs??

Please help,

Thanks

Windows 11 - Surface Pro X

Hi all...

I had the same problem as above except my files are in OneDrive rather than Dropbox - 10000s of files with the brown box which wouldn't open after an Office update. Bit of a panic, as a college lecturer... so really didn't need to lose access to everything..

I deleted OneDrive, reinstalled, and let it re-sync everything..

Now all files behaving again
Don't know if that would help at all?

I just got off the line with Microsoft Support for this same issue with all of my files not working and having the brown box.

Solution was OneDrive was not syncing or it was in the middle of syncing and updating after the windows 11 OS install.

So check your OneDrive and make sure its synced and online. Simple fix.

Good luck!

I am having the same issue on PDFs and they will not open.

This happened to me after significant Windows update. Turns out I just needed to restart Onedrive, sign back in and authenticate via notification to my phone.

i cant even delete the files hah