I have a set of Dropbox shared file URLs in two formats:

Format 1 — works fine programmatically:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xxx/file.docx?rlkey=xxx&st=xxx&dl=1

Format 2 — fails programmatically:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xxx/file.docx?dl=1

Format 2 URLs were originally cloud_editor=word links. I stripped that parameter and set dl=1.

The problem: When I click Format 2 URLs in a browser, the file downloads perfectly with full content. But when I fetch the same URL programmatically (Python requests, Google Apps Script UrlFetchApp, or even Selenium headless Chrome), Dropbox returns an HTML page instead of the file.

What I have tried:

• Setting browser-like User-Agent headers

• Using requests.Session() to handle redirects

• Selenium headless Chrome with auto-download configuration

• Appending &raw=1 to force raw download

Question: Is there a way to programmatically download Dropbox files that have no rlkey parameter, without access to the Dropbox API or the account owner's credentials?

One example of each type of URL is as under

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/m7ocqwa1niev7kjpps9cw/101-Interviews-Acropolis-Capital-R1.docx?rlkey=ta5go63pphruxlepp33a2c4za&st=sfmchzal&dl=0

and

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/f17lpcr4hprvvisbeabts/101-Interviews-Albany-Partners-R1.docx?dl=1