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.
How to return all files to offline?
I was having sync troubles so to save hard drive space I went to App/Preferences/Manage and selected all to be online. According to the app “…saves hard drive space. Files will still appear on your computer…”. But now the list is empty, and I can't figure how to return them to offline. Dropbox is not behaving according to your help files. All files sync but the online/offline/sync icons are not working, all files are either completely on my computer or not. (Backup works ok, the files sync but are completely on my computer - but that's how Backup works.) I have tried: Fresh install - restart - force quit in Activity Monitor - restarted Finder - no solution.
Dropbox stuck uploading and downloading on Windows
Dropbox has been happily working in the background for several years, keeping a useful backup of my important data, which I store in a folder named "Dropbox". However, without me noticing it stopped working about two weeks ago, so all the work I have done since then wasn't backed up. When I realised this I hovered on on the Dropbox icon at the bottom-right and it says "Indexing 40,023 files, Uploading 19,948 files, Downloading 23,138 files". I left it for several hours but nothing changed. Resource Monitor shows the Dropbox.exe is using 18% of CPU resourced and constanlt reading and writing file on the hard drive. I read that a possible solution is to open Dropbox >> Preferences >> Accounts, press Alt anywhere in the window then Fix Hardlinks and Fix permissions, but that makes no difference. I also tried re-booting the machine but that made no difference either. In desperation I uninstalled Dropbox then re-installed it. However, that was disasterous! it downloaded all my data from the cloud (which was several weeks out-of-date) and loaded it onto my laptop with today's date! Fotunately in many cases it retained the original folder, renamed named "xxx - copy" and created a new folder "xxx" with the downloaded data. I had to look through all my Dropbox folder, deleting each "xxx" folder and renaming "xxx - copy" to "xxx". Fortunately I also do a local backup every night of most of the folders in my Dropbox folder so I was able to restore some of my data from that. However, even after that the original problem still persists so Drobox isn't backing up. A further issue is that although I have set Dropbox preferences to Open Dropbox upon startup, it doesn't open at startup. Furthermore when I checked Startup Apps in Windows Control Panel it shows Dropbox as disabled. I re-enambled it, but next time I re-boot it is disabled again. What's gone wrong with Dropbox! How do I get it working again?
Right-click option to sync any computer folder to my account, without moving it inside Dropbox.
As for me, synchronization of folders via the application is done a little inconveniently and not even clear, and in fact it does not exist.. Let me explain what I mean: I would like to right-click on the folder that I want to synchronize with the folder from the hard drive, so that synchronization works automatically when adding files to this folder.. Why should I transfer files every time that I want to be in the cloud, it is inconvenient and you need to constantly spend time on this.. Let synchronization work for me..!! I think it is very convenient and, first of all, a function that saves time..!!
Manage hard drive space and selective sync aren't working; my files are still offline.
I have 2TB of Dropbox for my Photo Albums (and have had for many years). All folders were synchronised to my laptop but a mix of online and offline. My laptop has circa 1TB free. Last month Dropbox updated the Dropbox App and all files were removed from my PC. I have added the Dropbox app back to my machine and there is not room to add all of my files. Using selective sync I can add files to my HDD but when I set them to online only to free up disc space they continue to exist on my HDD. The white tick on solid green background turns to a green tick on white background (like they are online only) but they are still on my HDD. If I use the 'Manage hard drive space' the app will allow me to select the files and allow me to make them online only. The dark blue area of the used space bar reduces and I get the message; "All offline files were successfully moved to online-only, Nice!" But no hard drive space is freed. If you run 'Manage hard drive space' again the offline files are all back. You can make them offline repeatedly but when checking they are still there - even though the icon is green tick on white background (so they should be online). If you go into airplane mode the online only files are still on my HDD. I know I am not the only person having this problem. I have seen lots of people with similar problems and I cannot see any satisfactory explanation / solution.
Error 0x80070780 when trying to access files in a folder locally - folder not available online
Over the years I've lost some HDs to crashes and I tend to be lazy since these days you can take millions of photos and videos then just dump them on the cloud to never check them out later because you have too many things going on. Such is the case with a HD which was starting to give me some issues. It was nearly full and many of my files had become corrupted. So I started to move the files off the local drive, which included my Dropbox folder. I tried redirecting Dropbox to the new drive, but it kept stopping the sync. I believe because the existing drive was having problems/was nearly full. I was able to restore all but one folder from other backups. In this folder, even though I have Admin rights and ownership, I get an error code (which has been posted here before) Error 0x80070780. All the files have a storage carton icon in the lower left (meaning they are accessed through the cloud (no local storage). All the files show 0 bytes (on disk) the local drive. You can see the size of what the file is supposed to be if it were there. When I go into Dropbox, there is no folder of this name. There are no files of these names. I have checked the trashbin, but it is empty. I've looked through all folders, and this one folder and the 74 items in it can not be found. I'm going to assume that there was a sync issue, but I'm confused why Dropbox doesn't have the folder anywhere on the cloud. What is odd is on the local drive, the folder was created 05/10/2020. All the files inside the folder were dated 09/29/2017. Accessed is 12/16/24. I am not running Dropbox locally because it keeps trying to sync the cloud with my old drive. As I mentioned, I have restored the files (except this folder) and don't want to redirect Dropbox to the new drive just yet, because I didn't want to cause further problems. So I'll wait to see what response I get from tech support. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Dropbox Sync Time Remaining Isn't Showing on macOS
OS and Version: macOS Sequoia 15.2 (issue persists from earlier versions) Dropbox Version: Latest update as of today. Dropbox business customer. I’m encountering an issue with Dropbox for macOS using File Provider. When downloading files, the sync time remaining is never displayed. This makes it challenging to gauge how long the process will take, leading to a frustrating user experience. This issue has been ongoing for quite some time, spanning multiple macOS and Dropbox versions, so it doesn’t appear to be tied exclusively to the latest update. Others at my company are also having the same issue. I am regularly syncing a large amount of files as I run a video production company, often times up to 2 TB or so. Steps to Reproduce: Attempt to download files through Dropbox for macOS (File Provider). Observe that there’s no visible indication of sync time remaining. Expected Behavior: The sync time remaining should be displayed, allowing users to estimate when downloads will complete. Actual Behavior: The sync time is not shown, leaving users without any progress estimation. Additional Notes: Here's an image of the issue.File request option when right-clicking a file on macOS is no longer available
This issue has been reported previously on the following link but is now closed to any further responses. This is an important feature that has been removed without notice or explanation. I have tried to post the hyperlink to the previous discussion, but you are not allowing this either. Please provide an update. Regards Robert
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