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.
My files sync as online-only, but I need to make them available offline. How do I do this?
I keep virtually all my files on drop box so I have them continuously backed up. I have about 700gb of data used for this. I just bought a new computer with windows 11 and after getting drop box up and running it appeared that all my stuff was synced up. I thought it was going to take several house to copy over that much data but it only took about 20 minutes. Now I am discovering that many of my file are actually "off line" and when I open them I have a lag waiting for the file to come over the internet. I often have a need to use my computer when there is no internet connection and I must have all my file available on my C drive. How can I get all my files onto my c drive? Is this something that is actually happening in the background and I am just not seeing it? (I only got it working yesterday)
Will deleting a file from my PC folder also delete its backup? How can I save up space on my device?
From what I understand there is the backup folder and the folder that is on the PC and is available in other applications. If I delete a file from the PC, does the backup folder also delete the file? If so, I can't save disk space! I intended to have files that take up a lot of space just in the backup and take them off the disk to save space.
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?How can I make files online-only on Ubuntu?
Dear all Recently, I moved from Windows 11 to Ubuntu 24.04 in my laptop. During my journey in Windows, I was always very pleased with the integration between Dropbox and my operating system, as I could browse all the folders in my Dropbox account locally on my laptop without having to go to the web browser, even those that were not synced to my computer (i.e. I could access the folders not downloaded to my computer, see the file names... and when I double-clicked on a file, it would be downloaded to my computer and I could access it quickly and easily). When I downloaded and synced Dropbox with Ubuntu on my laptop, all the files and folders in my Dropbox account started to store a copy locally on my computer. For those folders that took up a lot of space and that I wasn't going to use at the moment, I right-clicked on them and checked the option to not sync with dropbox.com. However, this did not have the effect of clearing the space that these folders were taking up, with the desired functionality of being able to browse my laptop locally and see their names and be able to access them even if they weren't synced. I was wondering if there was a way to mimic this functionality that I enjoyed on Windows.Low space on internal drive, and added an external one. But now content is added to both of them.
I have run low on space on my internal drive and added an external drive for my Dropbox. I have gone through the process of connecting and syncing my Dropbox account to my new external Dropbox drive. However, it appears that any files I add or remove from my new Dropbox external drive are also being added and removed from my Dropbox folder on my internal system drive. When I look at Dropbox Preferences, I see that the location is set to sync only with my external Dropbox drive. I have restarted my computer and the problem persists. Any suggestions?
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..!!
Get an option to prioritize syncing for folders on the desktop app.
Dropbox currently has an option to prioritize which files to sync first. I'd like to extend that to provide the same functionality for selected folders. This will be particularly helpful in migrating to new equipment but also when changing a large amount of content. Can do?
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.