I keep getting selective sync conflicts by Dropbox?

Okay, I will try.

In using Selective Sync, (as an example) you selected Folder B and Folder D. Once you selected those folders in the Selective Sync Settings, Those folders will disappear off your Dropbox folder. It will be in the cloud only.

Let's say you had the same files that were in Folder B and D somewhere backed up (outside of Dropbox folder) and place them inside the Dropbox folder. It will create conflicted copies. That is because it's supposed to be 'off' your HD (off from your Dropbox folder)

Now, this is the way I understood from your Post. Its possible and not inconceivable that I may not have understood the situation.

But does this sound what happened?

All comments

Hello kelos..

thanks for reaching out to us. It seems to me you are having these conflicts mainly because you first selected certain folders/files to be selective synced. Another word folder is taken off your hard drive. Meanwhile you placed another set of same files back into main Dropbox folder, causing Desktop Client to recognize duplicates.

kelos-01

Thanks for the reply although I'm not quite sure I understand your explaination. Could you rephrase?

Okay, I will try.

Now, this is the way I understood from your Post. Its possible and not inconceivable that I may not have understood the situation.

But does this sound what happened?

kelos-01

yes this sounds quite possible although I don't understand why it moves the files to the private folder though.

but thank you

Can you elaborate what you mean by private folder? is this your Dropbox folder? if so, this shouldn't be happening unless you per chance shared that particular folder. Were these folders that were selected by selective Sync shared?

kelos-01

Private folder - So the person icon

To elaborate if there is a sync conflict it moved the files into this folder.

Also to solve this I just removed the local dropbox folder & redownloaded everything from the cloud. Seems to have worked.

Thanks for updating us. Glad it works out for you. Have a good one.

Hi, I have the same issue. My problem is that DB upload all "selective synch conflict" folders to my cloud... my cloud now have duplicated folders. How do I resolve this?

Hi there @karen007,

In general, when you have selective sync conflicts, you can choose from the following options:

Leave them as they are and let one continue to have “selective sync conflict” included in its name.
Change the name of the conflict folder.
Merge the files you need from both folders into one of the folders.

You can find more info about selective sync conflicts and how to prevent that behavior from occuring again in this article.

I understand that this may not be the ideal reply you were looking for, but I do hope it helps to some extent!

Hi,

I have no problem leaving the conflict folder on my local drive but DB kept uploading them to my cloud! It's really confusing and makes my DB huge. Also, DB creates a conflict folder for EVERY folder. I stopped synching before it gets viral. Anyways, I think DB should fix this. There could be "conflict" files if DB cannot decide which is the new version but it shouldn't have the whole folder as "conflict".

Karen

Thanks for your feedback, @karen007.

I've shared your thoughts on this with the dev team for review, so if you have any other ideas or comments you'd like us to forward, don't hesitate to get back to us.

Cheers!

ArtNDzine

I am also having the same issue after updat iOS on Mac to Catalina, however I do not have any duplicate files/folders that I can see. Can you help?

Hey @ArtNDzine, let's see what we can do here.

From what I understand, you're seeing some folders with Selective Sync Conflict but you don't have any duplicates, is that right?

As a first step, could you please ensure that folders with the same name are not selectively synced in your desktop app's settings?

If you don't find any, could you let me know what you see when you hover over your Dropbox icon on your menu bar?

Thanks in advance!

b9chris

This bug is awful.

1. Get tired of Dropbox relentlessly syncing scratch file folders, like the ones Visual Studio uses to store temp files in a Project's folder - you want the important Project files to be backed up continuously, but not the needless, frequently-modified temp files.

2. Remove those folders from Selective Sync.

3. Dropbox does the opposite of what you wanted - it keeps them in the cloud and deletes them, needlessly, from your machine - the exact opposite of what you were really asking, but whatever as long as it stops syncing useless folders.

4. It makes things much worse. A cascade of (Selective Sync Conflict) folders appear recursively on your machine, forever.

I'm really tired of getting prompted to pay more for Dropbox when they can't give us basic features like Ignore Folder. The feature request was on the Dropbox community and seen by Dropbox staff over 5 years ago. Embarrassing.

Hey @b9chris, thanks for checking in with us and for the time you took to share your feedback here.

At first, please note that when you uncheck a folder from the selective sync settings, you choose to remove that folder from your hard drive while keeping it in your account online and any other connected device. If you want to keep the folder locally, please make sure that you mark it with a tick.

It sounds like you’re using an application that creates temporary files which are necessary for its processes. Selectively syncing those files may cause syncing issues due to their nature and/or the third party app may generate further files to fill in the broken pathways caused by selective sync.

If you’d like a workaround on this, what might work is to pause syncing, open the file with the third party app, save the changes, resync the desktop app.

I understand if this isn’t the ideal reply you were looking for, but I hope it helps to some extent.

kenjura

This is still happening.

Steps:

Create a folder, let's call it foo
In foo, create a folder called "node_modules"
Go to Dropbox client, Selective Sync settings, and uncheck node_modules
Wait for sync
Verify on Dropbox.com that "node_modules" exists and is empty. Verify on local machine that folder no longer exists and Dropbox is 100% up to date and done syncing.
Create a folder called "node_modules".

Expected:

Folder exists locally, but does not sync because of Selective Sync settings. Files in that folder also do not sync.

Observed:

Dropbox forcibly renames folder to "node_modules (Selective Sync Conflict)" no matter how many times you try to name it "node_modules".

This behavior is completely blocking my flow. It is contrary to the way Dropbox has worked for years. It was always incredibly annoying to have to go through all these steps every time I make a new project to avoid needless syncing...but at least it worked. And now, suddenly, it doesn't.

Your suggestion to "rename the conflict folder" is vague. Rename the local folder? It must be "node_modules" and your software is preventing that. Rename the destination folder? Then Selective Sync won't know not to sync node_modules. Rename it to node_modules after the forced rename? Wish I could, but you, Dropbox, are preventing that.

If this isn't fixed, I'm done with Dropbox. It's been a nice decade, but you guys are obviously not interested in supporting your customers. It's one thing to not implement features like wildcard ignore that have been asked for for years, and another to break the one (terrible, but functional) workaround for your own application's shortcomings.

kenjura

Also, new member, created 30 seconds ago? I signed up during the beta in 2008. I've made posts on the Dropbox forums that are almost old enough to get their own Dropbox accounts. Get your act together.

I agree - on DB has no interest to serve the customers. Last week I asked the support team whether they could add a function to lock the Dropbox while I am away from my desk, or even create a "personal vault" like OneDrive so that others cannot get to some of my sensitive information. The answer is "no" because this is local folders that DB is synching. To be honest, the Chinese app "Baidu Cloud" can lock the cloud when you are in active for certain amount of time, while keep synching/transfering files at the background. That is, others cannot see what you are doing with the app while you are way. OneDrive can also lock a portion of the folder and make it invisible to others. I don't know how DB cannot. The only answer I got is to ask me keep safe with the windows log in password...

About synching... every time I synch another machine which I didn't synch for a while, there will be "conflicted copies"... Can't DB just compare the files and decide which one is older and needs to be synched? Or maybe the two files are just the same? I don't understand. Something like total commander 15 years ago can already compare files and synch between folders - which means technically it is not impossible.

I am also more and more disappointed with dropbox.

Rich

@kenjura wrote:
Expected:

Folder exists locally, but does not sync because of Selective Sync settings. Files in that folder also do not sync.

Dropbox no longer operates that way. The functionality was changed as that was not an officially supported function of Selective Sync.

Dropbox now has a method in beta that allows you to set Dropbox to ignore files and folders. The new method is not yet available to all users.

https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignored-files

Rich

@karen007 wrote:
Can't DB just compare the files and decide which one is older and needs to be synched?

The newest file isn't necessarily the one that should be synced. What if I have a problem with a file and decide to roll it back to a previous version (using my own backups)? In such a case, the older file is the one that I want synced to all other devices. If Dropbox simply relied on "older files get replaced with newer files" then the version of my file that I want synced would be replaced with the bad version.

Now expand on that. A computer is infected with ransomware and many files are encrypted, each with new modification dates. There's an old comptuer that's been offline for a while and has a clean copy of the files, with older modification dates. You bring that comptuer online and Dropbox starts to sync. With your reasoning, Dropbox just overwrote your clean copy with the newer, encrypted copy of your files.

By creating conflicts, Dropbox leaves the decision making up to the user. Dropbox can't (and shouldn't) assume that it knows which files should be synced. Instead, it keeps both copies and allows us to determine which files to keep.