Office documents appear with an orange/yellow box in front of them. They won't open

Anonymous
2021-12-15T15:12:22+00:00

I recently upgraded to Windows 11 pro. I reviewing my locally stored documents, several of them have an altered ICON with what looks like a file storage box to the left of the standard application ICON. None of these files will open by double-clicking. I chatted with MS support this morning and the agent couldn't figure it out either. Fortunately, most of these documents are also on OneDrive, but I have >100 with this issue and it will take time to find and restore a working copy.

Has anyone seen this?

Thanks,

Tom

[Moved from Word / For business / Windows]

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-20T03:55:41+00:00

    Yes, it was. Are you using OneDrive or Dropbox or another cloud storage? Are you signed into the server?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-12-20T04:05:46+00:00

    The files I’m having issues with are in Dropbox. I am not using a server or downloading anything to one drive. I uninstalled the application and reinstalled it and it seems to be working for the short term. However, the gold/brown box is still appearing on most files. I’ve also noticed that many of the excel files won’t happen because it says the file is corrupted or not supported (despite using the same sheet a week ago).

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  3. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-20T04:34:57+00:00

    I have that icon on all dropbox files that are marked for cloud. If you right-click on a file an make it available on the computer, will it open?

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-12-20T14:17:57+00:00

    no, the only solution was to uninstall the app. I’m afraid it will happen again. There seems to be some issue with the syncing from Dropbox to windows file explorer. Do you know of any other settings I should check?

    Thank you for all your help!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-12-20T14:31:06+00:00

    There are issues in synching following Win 11 installation with One Drive too. It required a connection to One Drive for nearly 24 hours before all documents (MS Office app derivatives) to synch up and the boxes then disappeared. At least that was my experience.

    Tom

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