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Couln't download. Remove incompatible characters from the filename
Recently all of my computer with Dropbox have started showing a sync error "Couln't download. Remove incompatible characters from the filename. e.g. emojis, /\"<>:|?*"
The problem filename isn'...
Hey Roy2010, no worries let me share Sam's response here as well.
Hi everyone,
Sharing an update on the topic: our team is working on adjusting this, and it's expected to roll out in our next Stable Build (V190).
You can check our releases here, and we'll keep you informed on the progress.
Thanks,
Sam
I appreciate your patience on this, thank you!
Same here, some of these files go back 10+ years and all of a sudden it's an issue? I know Dropbox hires some of the most talented programmers on the planet. The interface that is presented to us is clumsy to even begin attempting to change hundreds of files. "Go to file" for each and every file is extremely unrealistic. It actually opens each file in a new browser window ... yes we're inside the file. We don't need to be inside the file in order to rename the file. Who designed that interface should spend a week using his/her creation and see how painful it is to use. DropBox should present an interface of all offending files like in an explorer/finder window that would allow us to multi-select and run a REGEX-based script to remove the offending characters. /\."<>:|?* C'mon DropBox, you can do better than this!
OMG, yes, this!
Dumb interface for figuring out what's wrong with hundreds of my files that synced just fine (some for years) but suddenly today are a problem fror DropBox. And, the few "problem" files that I looked at have nothing but the letters a-z and a few spaces.
Hi Mark,
Thank you for trying to help me!
No, of today's 138 errors, any that I see do not have a space before the .pdf (or jpeg, indd, png, tiff, etc). In fact, many files have no spaces at all such as "CGI.jpg". A couple of screen caps attached. And these files are both old and weren't previously a problem. Thanks, Mike
- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hi Mike B.53, let me see what we can do about this!
Can you let me know your app's syncing status?
Also, have you tried renaming an example file through the website to see if it's going to sync afterward?
Let me know more about it. Hi Megan,
Every few days I get an error message from Dropbox saying it cannot sync several hundred files of images taken in 2014. These images have been in Dropbox for all those 8 years. The problem seemed to clear up a while back and I stopped getting the error messages for a while. But alas, the message is back. I assume that old files from 2014 have synced from another person who shares the files - but I don't know. In any case, cleaning them up on my computer is not sufficient, they need to be cleaned up on hte computers of other shared users.
This is NOT an issue of cleaning up the files, it is an issue of Dropbox suddenly refusing to accept file names that have been acceptable for years. Someone at Dropbox has to figure out exactly what is happening and FIX IT!
Hi Megan,
I'll try to do this test and get back to you. Very busy week…
Thanks!
I think this has to do with symlinked files, at least that is what it looks like for my 108 files that suddenly stopped syncing a couple of weeks ago between my Mac and windows systems.
I should add that they sync fine on the Mac, only windows has the problem. I haven't found a way to correct it and they worked fine for many many years...
It has started to happen on my iMac. Luckily it still syncs new files but there is a notification on the Dropbox icon that says the old files won't sync....so perhaps this is more of a Dropbox problem as opposed to a Windows/Mac OS problem...
We have been experiencing this same issue as well on our Dropbox Business account. Some of our computers have even gotten stuck in syncing, whether due to this issue or not. I had to delete the Dropbox app from those computers, reinstall and resync, which took over 2 days. That didn't solve the original issue of mis-named files not syncing - that is still present.
DROPBOX NEEDS TO PROVIDE A SOLUTION TO THIS.
Hi, I am also receiving the incompatible characters message. However, for me, it is on recent files - but none of them have strange characters or spaces (or at least none that I can spot). They are files created on my Mac but which won't synch onto my PC.
Since I cannot see where the problem is (no illegal characters) I cannot fix the issue. And as others have said before me, it is really not feasible in any case to change the names of so many files. Please help!
- Jay
Hi cathstoneman, do you have an example of a file or folder name that isn't syncing from your Mac to your PC to confirm what characters are being used?
For example NA22-CBC-005-ES_merged.pdf
- Jay
This file should sync normally, could you attach a screenshot showing the error message you're getting specifically?
- For what it’s worth OneDrive runs into a similar issue, but offers to automatically rename the files in question. It seems like a utility in DropBox to do this would be simple as I just noted that direct downloads from DropBox.com remove all special symbols.
Since these symbols are supported on Mac I am going to try A find and replace to rename from there. so it's late 2023 and I just had to rename 9 files which have been in our Dropbox for years. Why did this come up today?
Anyway, we're moving to OneDrive / SharePoint which is included in out Microsoft subscription, and saving over $1,000/year by ditching Dropbox
