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Forum Discussion
Ipad and Iphone viewing of long file names
Our company is having the issue that on the mobile app (using the ipad or iphone) often times the file name is too long to properly view what we are opening. I want to be able to read the entire file name so I know what i am opening since many of the beginning and last parts of the file are exactly the same for filing purposes so I want to be able to view the file name without having to open each one in order to find out. I'm hoping I make sense. Is there something I'm missing where I'm able to do this? I can't "right click" on the file name cause I'm mobile otherwise I would try that 🙂
Well, bugger me, Dropbox has finally fixed this with the latest update. I thought to re-check this today after the latest change, and straight away could see the filenames are displayed differently. The font is smaller, and the filename is truncated in the middle, so I can read the start of the file name, but also the end which is (with my file-naming convention), typically the differentiator. But the kicker is what happens with the display pane. It is now possible to close that — there’s a small “x” in the top left corner of the display/preview pane — and once that closes, the left pane with the file names expands to full screen view! And voila! I can now see the full long file names. Dropbox: THAT is the way to take advantage of the larger screen on an iPad, especially the 12.9” model. I’m still annoyed it took so long to remedy, but thank you for finally doing it.
Has this not been fixed yet? As someone mentioned before, this works perfectly on the Android platform. We use Android phones, but iPads for document viewing. I am in the construction industry and many files and file folders look similar when you compress them down to 5 characters.
It is pretty ridiculous that I am using my Android phone as the table of contents for Dropbox on my iPad.
Just in case anyone was wondering, here is the same file folder on my three devices. See the issue? The iPhone and Android both work as you would expect. You can see how this is frustrating when I got an iPad and expected the same user experience.
What's the problem Justin? If you want to know the file names all you have to do is click on those 12 arrow buttons. ;)
Excellent, Justin! Great illustration of what we are experiencing!
Sorry to say I think everyone is wasteing there breath as Dropbox obviously cares not about this issue and most likely isn't even reading these posts anymore since we haven't heard from the "team" in a really long time and this could have been easily fixed.
Justin R., you couldn't have put my thoughts across better!! Dropbox, please do look into this issue on the iPads as, like the previous users have all mentioned, the preview screen is really useless for some of us. Like the rest, I am also a paying Business account user. I'm sure you can do a simple check from our account names!
Do hope that this issue would be resolved soon...
If you won't FIX the BIG PROBLEM of severely truncating long file names on the iPad, at least make it so we can run the iPOD/iPHONE version on the iPad. At least the iPhone/iPad versions display enough characters to make it useful.
I am a big proponent of Dropbox but silliness like this makes me think twice. This issue is not limited to the app but also when viewing files through Safari on iOS. Google Drive does not have this problem. A workaround or at least a response would be deeply appreciated.
I have had to move our company to google drive.
Sad that such a simple thing to fix is such a problem.
Do you like Google Drive? I am thinking of moving our company away from Dropbox because of this issue.
Google Drive worked fine from a sync point of view - not quite as fast as Dropbox, which really can't be beaten by any of the other services I've tried in terms of sync speed and reliability.
As I wrote in my earier post, however, it no longer solves the long filenames issue as they "improved it out" of their app (unless of course they've changed it back over the last couple of months
The sad part is I pay for Dropbox and expect them to respond to customer issues.
