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
bwhight
8 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Smart Sync - Windows Explorer Search Not Working
I am testing Smart Sync for our team. All fine but when files are 'Online Only', Windows Explorer search can't fined them. I have tried a few PCs in our team and all have the same problem, so I don...
- 7 years ago
The Windows search functionality, that allows finding files set to online-only through the Smart Sync feature, is now available on computers with versions of Windows 8 and above, starting with the beta version 60.3 of the Dropbox desktop application that you can find here.
When this is available in the stable version 60.4 next week, your computer should automatically update and receive the fix.
Thanks to all that reported this and we appreciate your patience on this matter.
Happy syncing!
grahamaikman
7 years agoNew member | Level 2
Youve probably got indexing switched off, "control panel" search for indexing "then rebuild index" or tick "index this drive" where your dropbox is located
- brianchris7 years agoHelpful | Level 6
grahamaikman, I appreciate your desire to help, but it seems as though DropBox representatives have confirmed this problem to be a "known issue" earlier in this very thread. Its seemingly just taking them a very long time (many months, or longer) to solve this problem. As those DropBox representatives probably alreay know, the inability to search offline files in Windows makes the (otherwise incredible) "SmartSync" feature pretty worthless. That is because, if most are your files are offline files, then the only way to find them is to manually plow through all your DropBox files and folders. Without paying extra for the "SmartSync" feature (as we do), we would have had full search of all of our DropBox files and folders for these past many months. Hopefully DropBox will solve this problem soon.
- anjaporter7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
I imagine we can still use the search function on the web version which might at least indicate where a file is stored for easier way of navigating to it in File Explorer... not ideal but a workaround in the meantime.
- ooninay7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
True, and thank goodness dropbox search online works as well as it does, but realistically I'd probably only do this as a last resort... it means switching to my browser, going to the Dropbox website and logging in if not logged in already, doing the search, then manually navigating to the file folder in Windows where the file I need is. So not something I'd ever do unless I was desperate. This is actually such a big issue for me because of the way that I work that it means I'm not using Dropbox at all until it gets resolved. Back to OneDrive (which I notice continues to improve and also has the equivalent of Smart Sync, but without the additional fee and searching works.)
- SteveWeston7 years agoHelpful | Level 6No this is not the problem. Done that multiple times.
- emelep7 years agoExplorer | Level 3
Indexing is definitely on. I will rebuild it, but it is already on.
- Ross_S7 years agoDropbox Staff
Hi all,
We are currently working on this issue and I hope to bring you a concrete update soon. At this point all I'm able to share is simply that we're activley persuing a solution here. I'll update more when I have a timeline on the fix.
Many thanks for highlighting here!
- xuan-minh7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Following to get updates on this issue.
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