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
    2022-03-02T06:23:40+00:00

    (At least for me) this brown icon is only in Windows 11. I have the normal Dropbox icon for smart sync - a gray X - on Windows 10.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T18:41:06+00:00

    All:

    Here is a sample of one of the documents showing this ICON. I have roughly 200 of these files that show this ICON image. They appear to be MS Word files, but right-clicking and trying to open them using either "Open" or "Open with" results in nothing.

    You can open a properties window that displays the following, but still nothing happens when attempting anything here.

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  3. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-02T20:16:05+00:00

    Are you on windows 11?

    So, it's not just Dropbox that has the icon.... the 0 bytes indicates it in not synced, that it's just the pointer (shortcut) to the file online. If you double click (and are signed into the account and online), it should download then open. If it's not opening, I would sign out of OneDrive, rename the OneDrive folder then sign back in and let it sync everything again.

    For one reason or another, windows won't / can't display the online icon - one theory I found this morning is the file attributes are corrupt, so it shows that icon. It makes some sense since only the shortcuts to the online-only files have the icon. But the attributes look fine to me and changing them did not fix the icon.

    My OneDrive files are fine - it's the dropbox one with weird icon.

    Image

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T20:46:02+00:00

    Diane:

    I am on Windows 11. The 'funny' file issue was a direct result of the migration to Win 11 from 10. I counted just over 200 files that have the yellowish/brown box in front of them. It's there for MS Word as well as Excel.

    I did try the OneDrive resync idea back in late January (no luck). I also opened a case with Microsoft Support - no luck there either. They couldn't identify the ICON above (at least the agent and a supervisor consulted).

    I plan to rename the OneDrive folder and see if it will resync my files. I'll let you know the outcome.

    Thanks,

    Tom

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  5. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-02T22:33:39+00:00

    I haven't been able to "identify" it either - that would give me a clue if it signifies a file attribute issue. But so far, its only on files that are synced with shortcuts only (to save drive space). As I said, I have it on 3 computers only with dropbox files and only in Windows 11.

    It's a shell icon - (there is a big one in the file too).

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