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Forum Discussion

GadgetGrrl's avatar
GadgetGrrl
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago

How do I permanently stop a huge sync?

I accidentally started an enormous sync to my iMac (10k + files urk) that I can't seem to stop.  My only option appears to be to pause it.  I don't want all this data to be sync'ed to my computer at all so how do I make this thing stop permanently?  It's gobbling up bandwidth and my data and after a day of syncing, has still not finished the job.

 

Many thanks in advance.

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hi GadgetGrrl, and Happy New Year!

     

    If you check the top part of your screen, where your clock settings are showing, can you see a small Dropbox icon? If yes, please click on it and then, hover over the syncing status showing at the bottom of the window. 

     

    Do you see an option to pause syncing there perhaps?

     

    Let me know.

    • GadgetGrrl's avatar
      GadgetGrrl
      Explorer | Level 4

      Hi Nancy - thanks for your quick response.  Yes, I can see the pause option with the following choices - 30 minutes, one hour, tomorrow, or indefinitely.

       

      Cheers

      • Hannah's avatar
        Hannah
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Hey GadgetGrrl, sorry to jump in here. 

         

        If you accidentally moved files into your Dropbox folder and you don't want them to sync to your Dropbox, you can just select and move them out of the Dropbox folder, to stop them from syncing.

  • ceso's avatar
    ceso
    New member | Level 2

    Hi - I am having the same issue whereby I accidentally clicked the "cloud" icon on my Apple computer and now the entire folder and subfolder are syncing and I can't stop it. This folder has literally dozens of GBs within it so I want to STOP the sync not just pause it — because I need to sync other things. What to do???

    • Jay's avatar
      Jay
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

      Hi ceso, have you tried right clicking that folder and marking it as online-only again? This would return it to the previous state and stop the downloading of files.

  • Please give us the option of hard canceling out of synching as it is an enormous time waster on those rare occasions users accidentally synch a top-level folder. 

     

    I'm losing hours out of my day as Dropbox re-indexes and downloads my old folder system. 

  • TomMunch's avatar
    TomMunch
    Helpful | Level 6

    I'm having a similar issue. I added a folder to Dropbox on my desktop Mac that defaulted to syncing to my laptop. I unchecked the folder from Dropbox on my laptop, but it didn't stop the sync. I then actually deleted the folder from Dropbox online and on my Mac desktop, and it's still trying to sync 100,000 files that no longer exist. Ugh. I'm sure I'm going to run out of disk space on my laptop, and meanwhile new files that I'd like to sync to online Dropbox and my desktop Mac and from my laptop and access from my phone and iPad are not showing up because I guess they are lost in the cue behind these other 100,000 files.

    • Walter's avatar
      Walter
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

      Hi there TomMunch - sorry to hear about this.

       

      If this persists after rebooting your computer or quitting and relaunching the app, could you send us a screenshot of the app's status so that we can have a  visual too? 

      • TomMunch's avatar
        TomMunch
        Helpful | Level 6

        I signed out and back in, and after it indexed all my files it no longer was trying to sync the deleted files.

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