You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

lmiland's avatar
lmiland
Explorer | Level 3
2 years ago

Available Offline Expiry

I am using Dropbox for Windows. I typically have all my files online-only, but when I am using some of them, I like to download the folder that they are in. I download it by using the 'Make Available...
Desktop
Sync
Windows
  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    2 years ago
    lmiland wrote:

    Does this mean that Dropbox will not switch files back to online-only automatically?

    Files that you mark as Available Offline remain that way until you mark them as Online-only.

lmiland's avatar
lmiland
Explorer | Level 3

Thanks for the reply Emily.

 

Emily84 wrote:

By default, Dropbox doesn't have a specific time frame to automatically switch files back to online-only.

This is ambiguous to me. Does this mean that Dropbox will not switch files back to online-only automatically? Or does it mean that Dropbox will switch files back to online-only, but the time frame in which it does this is not well defined?

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
2 years ago
lmiland wrote:

Does this mean that Dropbox will not switch files back to online-only automatically?

Files that you mark as Available Offline remain that way until you mark them as Online-only.

  • hispdtape's avatar
    hispdtape
    New member | Level 2
    2 years ago

    I was working in an offline environment without internet access and was expecting to be able to access some files which I had made “available offline”. Despite appearing under “Manage offline files”, apparently these files couldn’t be opened because there was no internet access, and it said I needed to get online to “re-sync”. This caught me off-guard because I’d expect the files to remain permanently offline, given its name. Granted, I hadn’t accessed those files in a while, but from my experience, offline files do “expire” (ie. become unavailable) after a set time frame, unless you “re-sync”.

    • Walter's avatar
      Walter
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
      2 years ago

      Hey hispdtape, sorry to hear about this.

       

      Could you clarify your computer's OS and confirm that those files were indeed available offline and not online only or placeholders (if the app wasn't syncing) when you tried to work on them? 

       

      Were you getting a specific error? Do you maybe have a screenshot of that in hand? 

       

      Any additional information is more than welcome! 

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