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Forum Discussion
Selective sync - Showing all folders marked for sync, even though I previously unselected many.
Hi,
I am using the selective sync option on my PC (Win 10, DB v202.4.5551) and I already have many folders set to web only. So, if I remember correctly, when I open the preferences and go to selective sync options, those folders shouldn't be marked. I could clearly see what folders will be stored locally and which will be stored only on web.
Today I wanted to set few more folders to web only, but now in the selective sync options menu all folders are marked to be stored locally as well. They are actually not stored locally as per my previous selection, but they are shown as marked in that menu. So, I am afraid that if I make any changes in those settings, all marked folders will be set to locally stored and downloaded to my PC.
Hopefully I am making sense and you can understand what I am trying to say.
What to do, how to make changes in selective sync menu but not to have to manually search and un-mark folders I already am not storing locally and prevent a whole mess (I have a lot of folders set to web-only).
Thank you
Mateja
- Vicker
Super User
Hi, sekturina ,
In Dropbox, the "Selective Sync" and "Online Only" are 2 different features. In short, selective sync control whether the item is shown on your local machine or not, while online only control whether the file on your local machine is just an empty file or with the actual content. These 2 features could be combined to use together.
For more information regarding Selective Sync, please refer to the official documentation here.
https://help.dropbox.com/sync/selective-sync-overviewFurther, here's a short extract that explains the difference.
What's the difference between selective sync and online-only?Making your files and folders online-only also helps save hard drive space. These files and folders will still be visible from your computer, but are stored in your Dropbox account online.
Based on how you use certain files and folders, they can automatically be set to online-only.
Cheers
Hi Vicker,
Thank you for your reply.But I don't think you understood the issue. You concentrated on difference between two features, one of which I didn't talk about, but I might have used the term that sounds like I was talking about it. I am only talking about the selective sync, in which, folders that are not marked will be stored only online and not on my hard drive. I used the term online-only which caused your confusion I assume.
With this clarified it should be easier to understand the issue.
Here's a screenshot of the menu. In reality, some of these folders are already set to *not sync, store only online* and when I open selective sync it shows them marked to sync and store locally. If I try to make any changes, it will change the settings for all folders and store locally folders I previously set not to store locally. Do you understand the issue? Everything is showing as marked to be seen locally, even though I already made many folders not visible on local drive months and years ago.There are too many folders that I already made to be stored only on Dropbox and I don't remember them all. That should be shown in the menu, those folders shouldn't be marked. But all folders are, which doesn't correspond to reality. If I want to turn off sync to a folder now, and I click update, it will register to store locally everything.
My team and I recently started experiencing this as well. Despite syncing only a subset of the folders, reopening the setting will show them all checked.
I am having this exact problem no matter how many times I uncheck a box in selective sync it makes no difference and when I go back in they all checked again. Did anyone at dropbox fix this problem for you? I can't open any files or applications so can't work. Put a support request in but no one has got back to me.
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Hi Geraldine Ward, is it possible that the folders are currently in use by another application on your machine?
What folders are you trying to deselect? A screenshot showing this would help greatly.
The Selective Sync ones.
Dropbox Preferences / sync / selective sync / modify. I can't attach a screenshot - it isn't allowing me to. but I would think you know what I am talking about surerly?
anyway to update. Someone in support emailed me back once so I thought she might try and help me fix it but she hasn't got back. I have sent a few emails.
So I have been trying to fix it myself. I have deleted dropbox and reinstalled it. I have managed to get it to unselect the folders but it doesn't seem to make any difference to the storage on my machine and it is still indexing 100 000 or more images?? Yet I haven't been able to work for this to do so. AND I have taken away images to sync so I am not sure why that is happening.
I have managed to free up space on my mac but still I see dropbox is filling it up - I have only a fraction of what I used to have on drobox on my desktop. Seems like I need to go back to hard drives and old school ways. Which I plan to.
