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

Question

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]

Answer 1

Assuming that this is the icon that you see

If you right click on the file and then on Properties, you will probably see something like

that will show you where the actual file is located, with the Size on disk: of 0 bytes indicating that the icon that you see is only a "shortcut" to the file. That you cannot open it indicates that you do not have access to the actual location of the file and that is probably because you are not signed into the remote service.

Answer 2

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).

Answer 3

(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.

Answer 4

Chitrahaas:

Thanks for your reply. The files are a mix of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. No pdf's or other program file types that I've discovered. I will forward the ticket number to you, but I cannot forward a copy of the file since none of them open - only an image of the file name/extension and Icon are shown in the directories affected. The agent took control of my system and tried everything possible on her end, but nothing worked. Fortunately, I have these as reference points so I can locate them on One Drive and pull down the file(s) stored there.

Thanks again for your help. Watch for the ticket number in your private message.

Tom

Answer 5

If you send me a copy of one of the document with which you have the problem, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.