"Unfortunately, Documents has stopped" popping up whenever I try attaching a file

[Android Central Question]

I have an LG G4 with Koodo running Marshmallow. Recently, I've noticed that when I try to attach a file in Gmail, a crash report saying "Unfortunately, Documents has stopped" will show up, and the file select screen will disappear. I also tried opening files using Documents in other apps which also resulted in the message appearing, so I'm quite certain this isn't a Gmail problem.

I'm not sure how long this has been going on since I don't tend to need to send attachments, but it can't have been going on for more than a week since I was still able to open Documents a week ago.

I've restarted my phone, cleared the Documents caches, and uninstalled my three most recent app installations, all to no avail.

I read on other posts and forums that it may be a OneDrive problem, but I don't and never have had OneDrive or any affiliated apps installed on my phone. The only OneDrive related thing on my phone was an old account that I removed after reading that it may be the problem. It solved the issue momentarily, but I'm now back to receiving the error message.

I restarted my phone in safe mode once to see if it was a software issue or a third party app issue, and the message did not appear in safe mode.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Try also clearing the data from the Documents app. This shouldn't erase any of your actual documents, since those are discrete files saved elsewhere.

 

[LHJLDH]

Hi, thanks for the advice, but I did that and it still hasn't been working.

 

[B. Diddy]

The fact that this doesn't happen in Safe Mode points to a 3rd party app causing problems. Unfortunately, unless you already have a suspicion of which app is responsible, you may just have to uninstall apps one by one until the problem goes away.

 

[LHJLDH]

Alright, thank you very much. I will see if I can find any app that could be causing this!

 

[LHJLDH]

So sorry, I tried restarting my phone in Safe Mode one more time just to double check, and it seems as though Documents is still crashing. It works more often than when I'm not in Safe Mode, but most of the time, Documents still crashes.

Is there anything else you could possible think to do to solve this?

 

[B. Diddy]

Hmm. Does the phone have an SD inserted? If so, unmount the card (in Settings>Storage) and remove it, then see if the problem persists. If there's a corrupt document file on the card, maybe that's causing the crash.

 

[LHJLDH]

Unmounting the SD card still resulted in Documents crashing...

 

[B. Diddy]

Grrr. Not sure what to try next. If you have a lot of document files saved to Internal Storage, it may be worth backing all of those up to your hard drive or to the cloud, then deleting them all from the phone (in case one of those files is corrupt, and causing the Documents app to crash).

Another possible workaround -- install a 3rd party file manager app like Total Commander to see if that app can be made the default document selector. You might have to go to Settings>Apps, then tap Menu>Reset All App Preferences first, in order to clear the default from the Documents app.

 

[LHJLDH]

As of right now, I tried Total Commander, but all that ended up happening was that it became another option within Documents rather than replacing Documents, so that was still a no go. As far as deleting documents goes, though, I've deleted most of them (still have a few left), but Documents is still crashing. Although, most of the files I have yet to delete are files that have been on my phone since I've gotten it, so I don't actually think they're the problem.

I really do appreciate all this, but I'm starting to lose hope for a solution.

 

[B. Diddy]

It might be time for a factory reset, if you haven't already tried it.:-\