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Forum Discussion
files with .icloud extensions not opening
After upgrading to Mac Catalina OS, I found 408+ of my files in dropbox now have .icloud extensions and won't open. Apple says it is dropbox's issue. I need the files. How do I retrieve them from dro...
Hi Jay,
Thanks for this. In fact, I never moved these files out of Dropbox - they were safely in Dropbox when I had Apple clean-install Catalina. Somehow during the installation, Catalina added .icloud extensions to aliases already in Dropbox. I don't understand how the OS got access to them - that seems very wrong to me - but I know that they are aliases because when I couldn't open the files directly from dropbox, I dragged one to my desktop and it disappeared, "poof!" Apple thinks that the files are actually still in the Dropbox cloud, I just can't access them because they have .icloud extensions preventing them from linking up to Dropbox. They say the only way I can access the actual files (as opposed to just the aliases) is through you, Dropbox. Can you help?
Thanks,
Susan
Jay
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffYou can try downloading each file and folder manually via the Dropbox site to your computer, however, it does seem like iCloud has made these changes, so it might persist even after putting files back into the Dropbox folder.
Is there no option with iCloud to download the files from their system, or to disable that feature?
Hi Jay,
Thanks again for trying to help me. The Apple technicians say that there is no way to change or reverse the extension on the file that will make it so that I can retrieve the files themselves. Yes. It appears that iCloud went into Dropbox and replaced the Dropbox links with aliases, but they still say that the actual files are in the Dropbox cloud and not in the iCloud. So what I am asking you is where then are my actual Dropbox files now, and is there some way Dropbox can make them available to me? By the way, what I've discovered by rummaging the internet and iCloud is that these are called "icloud synchronization files," if that is any help.
Thanks,
Susan
- Jay
You can try and see if the files were deleted so you can recover them.
Otherwise, try checking the version history on one of the .icloud files to see if the full file is in the history.
I've tried both delete/restore and versions. None of the files are in the "deleted" folder. When I drag them off Dropbox to my desktop, they disappear from the desktop, but appear in the Dropbox deleted area. When I "restore" them to Dropbox, they still have the .iCloud extension and won't open.
There are no other "versions" for these files.
If it's any help, they're identified in my Mac finder as "iCloud extension files," not pdf, docx or jpg.
Where exactly does Dropbox keep the actual files (not the mere links to them)? How can I access them? Are they lost forever? If I upgrade to another level of Dropbox, can I get telephone support?
Thanks,
Susan
