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

Anonymous
2022-02-12T17:29:29+00:00

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 for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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.

0 comments No comments

118 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-02T22:02:26+00:00

    I'm glad for you. But this is a forum so the principle is that some person has a problem that others may have a solution to. So it remains available to others as a resource forever. In this instance, when you had your problem and posted about it, the discussion continues even after you are done. People will continue to use this as a resource. In other words, it's not really about you! ;)

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-02T21:21:03+00:00

    Hi all, when all of a sudden most of my PDF files became inaccessible, I tried several of the listed below "solutions" , but none of them worked. I went to my cloud storage and noted that the PDFs had the uploaded mark greyed out although they should be stored on my drive (mystery for another day). I went into one of the inaccessible files properties > advanced and two boxes were checked:

    File is ready for archiving

    Allow this file to have content etc. etc.

    I unchecked both boxes > apply > ok and some (only some(?)) of my files became available.

    I am not sure what the pattern in regaining/losing accessibility is since I did not do anything to change the way I store the files. The culprit it's definetely some cloud storage setting, but I have yet to find the exact solution.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2025-03-24T22:25:16+00:00

    Thank you very much for your help but the problem no longer exists for me.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments