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aprilafternoon's avatar
aprilafternoon
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago

Share links don't work on Android

For a while now, I've been sharing Dropbox documents in PDF format via email. Once in a while people tell me they "can't open the links." I always just assumed they didn't know what they were doing, but today I happened to test one of these links on an Android phone.

In the Gmail app on Android, clicking on a Dropbox link in this format:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o8fpocz6tykra0o/20190204.pdf?dl=0

gives the error,

Cannot display PDF (20190204.pdf is of invalid format)

Anyone know how to get this to work on Android?

  • Hi virtue, in general, this error message seems to be a generic error message related to a third party app. 
     
    For this reason, I’d recommend attempting to opening the link with a mobile browser and, if you’re still having issues, you can always contact our Support team for a more in-depth look on the matter using our internal tools. 
     
    Thanks in advance!
     
     
    This thread is closed due to inactivity. Please feel free to create a new topic here. 
  • aprilafternoon's avatar
    aprilafternoon
    Helpful | Level 5

    If anyone has received private help from this thread that has resolved their issue and wants to report back here what general steps were taken, that might be helpful.

    • andreich's avatar
      andreich
      New member | Level 2

      I just support it only in my own application. By click on link I open web browser. I don't know any other solution. It should be fix by dropbox team

      • Lusil's avatar
        Lusil
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        Hey there, 
         
        andreich, thank you for letting us know what worked for you on this matter, awesome work!
         
        TrevorNemanic, I was able to locate your open communication and can see that it’s been reviewed by a specialized member of my team. Since they have access to our internal tools, they’ll be able to efficiently look into this for you and get back to you as soon as possible. 
         
        Thanks in advance for your patience!
  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    Hi there, aprilafternoon
     
    As a first step, could you please send me a screenshot of the error message you’re seeing (excluding personal info)? You can do this by selecting one of the following options:

    Thanks in advance!

      • Lusil's avatar
        Lusil
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Thanks for the screenshot, aprilafternoon!

        Hmm. :thinking: The first thought that comes to mind is that the device doesn't have the relevant third party app to support the file in question so as to preview. 

        However, I just wanted to ask, if you change the shared link's dl=0 into dl=1 (so as to force the file to download), are you then able to preview the file directly from your mobile phone by any chance? 

        Let me know what you find!

  • Здравко's avatar
    Здравко
    Legendary | Level 20

    Hi aprilafternoon,

    The message is absolutely normal. The link point to JPEG file, erroneous renamed to .pdf. Of cource, android try to redirect to activity serving PDF, but the same activity seems doesn't know anything about JPEG. Check Your file format and/or set apropriate name extension. :upside_down:

    • aprilafternoon's avatar
      aprilafternoon
      Helpful | Level 5

      Unfortunately, that's not the case... the file in question is a valid PDF file and I can view it properly from iOS devices... just not Android. :wink:

      • Здравко's avatar
        Здравко
        Legendary | Level 20

        Hi aprilafternoon,

        As response to link Your posted initialy (https://www.dropbox.com/s/o8fpocz6tykra0o/20190204.pdf?dl=0) in part of the content (no to direct link) headers reported are:

        accept-ranges: bytes
        cache-control: public, max-age=31536000, no-transform
        content-disposition: inline; filename="AA-iJSzD.jpe…ilename*=UTF-8''AA-iJSzD.jpeg
        content-length: 232494
        content-security-policy: referrer no-referrer
        content-type: image/jpeg
        date: Thu, 07 Feb 2019 01:25:27 GMT
        referrer-policy: no-referrer
        server: nginx
        timing-allow-origin: *
        vary: Origin
        x-content-type-options: nosniff
        x-dropbox-request-id: a80463e96954cc0b61e152b987784782
        X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
        x-robots-tag: noindex, nofollow, noimageindex
        x-server-response-time: 171

        all together (at least, when I clicked the link provided). Note especially the line:

        content-type: image/jpeg

        I will left this byself without comments.

        Something more: Even on a same OS different activities can have different capabilities (What to say on different devices and/or OS-es). So, some activities can serve more types, others - no. That's it.

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