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Forum Discussion
Error when copying anything from Dropbox (monterey, 2020 m1 MBP)
Whenever I try to copy a folder from the local Dropbox folder to another folder in my Mac, I get this error:
"The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8062)."
Does anyone know why this happens? I haven't messes with permissions or anything. Copying from any other folder works normally, and older folders in Dropbox are copied normally, only recent ones cannot be copied.
EDIT: Just as strange, when I compress those given folders, I can move the compressed files outside of the Dropbox folder.
I'm having the exact same problem. Because of the changes to Dropbox recently, I no longer feel like I can trust it like I used to, so I started making backups. When I try to copy the entire folder. I will get "The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8062).
In previous versions, when the Dropbox folder was not stored in the Library I never had these problems. Presently, I'm trying to copy small groups of files in Dropbox. Most of the files will copy OK. Obviously, this is extremely time consuming and tedious. I miss the earlier Dropbox.
I am using Mac OS 12.6.1 on a Mac Pro
Well, I have some additional information that allowed me to complete the copying.
After copying files in small pieces I found the problem file. It was some kind of a database for an oscilloscope. The file ended with .db, this document does not run on a Mac anyway. I deleted it. Hopefully next time when I back up, I'll have smooth sailing. It's really a shame that the Mac OS can't report the file it’s having trouble with, instead it just chokes and gives an error code which is useless for the average user.
That's such a painful process.
I tried just creating an empty folder in Dropbox, and tried copying this folder (without any files within) to my Macbook's local hard drive. Same error message popped up.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey felipevaz, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
What is the current sync status of the Dropbox app? You can hover your mouse over the Dropbox icon in your menu bar to check that.
Also, if you quit the Dropbox app and try to copy the folder again, do you see a different behavior?
Let me know and we'll go from there.
Hi Hannah, thanks for stepping in. Hovering over the icon says "Up to date", and stopping the app doesn't really help (and forcing quit them via Activity Monitor doesn't help either). I also restarted the computer to no avail.
In parallel, what might be somehow related is that I have an incomplete Time Machine backup (it says it is out of space in the backup volume). I've excluded the Dropbox folder (~/Library/CloudStorage) from being backed up, but not before it started the backup.
I have this same problem on macOS 12.6 since I upgraded to the Dropbox version which uses the CloudStorage folder.
I cannot successfully copy the CloudStorage folder when I backup my files. I can copy the individual files that are within the CloudStorage -> Dropbox folder.
- Nancy
Hi donbraffitt, hope you’re doing well.
Can you please send me a screenshot of the error message that you keep getting?
Also, what’s the exact app version of your Dropbox app?
I encountered this problem also recently, on an older Mac using Monterey (12.6.7). I do not see it on newer Macs with Ventura.
The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8062).
This error message occurs when trying to copy the files and folders that are available offline in the Dropbox folder (which is now username/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox).
I have about 170 folders in that Dropbox folder and the error occurs on only some of the folders. After some experimentation, I could trace the error to specific files, several files that seem odd with names ending in ".db" for which I don't have or know the app, and some other files with names like "icon?"
Some were very old files that had lost their connection to an app (maybe the app no longer exists) and they show like they are a unix executable. In a few cases the file was invisible but seemed to be something that the MacOS creates within a folder, but is not a file that a user would actually use.
When I deleted all these "problem files" (which I have no use for anyway) the complete copy of the Dropbox folder contents (30 GB) succeeded.
I think there may be several contributing causes to this problem, not all of which may be entirely Dropbox's fault:
(1) I had copied wholesale entire folders from my Mac to Dropbox for safekeeping. Apparently some of these folders have hidden files created by the MacOS that interfere with normal copying out later on. This seems to be a MacOS oddity but I would hope Dropbox could have coped with it. One ought to be able to copy entire folders to Dropbox without worrying about what is inside them, hidden or not hidden.
(2) My Mac running Monterey had the problem but the laptop running Ventura did not have it. So this seems related at least in part to differences in different versions of the MacOS.
(3) Once I inspected the problem files, I could see that some of them had never synched, they had ! notations. This seems to be due to some flaw in Dropbox maybe?
(4) The MacOS is unforgiving because when one of these problem files was encountered, it stops the entire copying process so all subsequent copies are not completed due to one problem file encounters early on.
What I have learned: the latest version of the MacOS does not seem to have this issue. As for the earlier versions where I am also using Dropbox, I am now careful about copying entire folders wholesale especially where there are very old files/folders nested.
I think both the MacOS and Dropbox share the blame for some of this. However I can see how it can be hard for Dropbox to maintain compatibility with many versions of the MacOS, especially as the handling of these files seems different, at least under Monterey versus Ventura.
