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How do I permanently stop a huge sync, and remove all the added files?

I accidentally started an enormous sync to my iMac (10k + files urk) that I can't seem to stop. My only option appears to be to pause it. I don't want all this data to be sync'ed to my computer at all so how do I make this thing stop permanently? It's gobbling up bandwidth and my data and after a day of syncing, has still not finished the job.

Many thanks in advance.

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Hannah

Hey @MettaSong, sorry to hear about this.

Pausing syncing won't do the trick, because at some point you'll need to unpause, so the sync will need to finish anyway.

I think the next best thing here is to unlink the computer from your account, delete the Dropbox folder and the Dropbox app and reinstall it again from scratch.

To unlink the computer, you can either delete it from your connected devices or sign out of the app.

I hope this helps.

All comments

Nancy

Hi @GadgetGrrl, and Happy New Year!

If you check the top part of your screen, where your clock settings are showing, can you see a small Dropbox icon? If yes, please click on it and then, hover over the syncing status showing at the bottom of the window.

Do you see an option to pause syncing there perhaps?

Let me know.

GadgetGrrl

Hi Nancy - thanks for your quick response. Yes, I can see the pause option with the following choices - 30 minutes, one hour, tomorrow, or indefinitely.

Cheers

Hannah

Hey @GadgetGrrl, sorry to jump in here.

If you accidentally moved files into your Dropbox folder and you don't want them to sync to your Dropbox, you can just select and move them out of the Dropbox folder, to stop them from syncing.

GadgetGrrl

Hi Hannah - this is a good suggestion and is one I have already tried. My problem is a sync happening in the other direction - from online DropBox onto my computer. Sadly, my sync still shows 10,000+ files trying to sync. I've also tried signing out and signing back into the desktop app after making changes to my folder sync preferences to omit those folders impacted by my silly mistake of doing a massive sync. I guess I'll just have to hang in there until it finishes. Annoying but a learned lesson for me.

Cheers and thanks.

Liam005

GG I applaud you on your patience here, because you made it clear in your initial message you don't want to PAUSE, you want to STOP the action and yet no real resolution beside for 'wait it out' was provided. 🙃

I've just made a similar mistake, accidentally mis-clicked on a major folder on my Dropbox and suddenly 50 000 files are syncing in my Dropbox, I don't even know what I did, as it was a mis-click, but I can only assume the worst; that all my online only files are downloading to my PC for offline use and there's no way for me to cancel it. I now have to blanket 'make everything offline' just so I can begin the process of slowly re-adding the files that I did need on my PC for offline use. :see_no_evil:

How is it that Dropbox does not allow for a 'cancel that action' or 'clear sync queue' at this point?

Nancy

@Liam005, can you please specify how this folder started being downloaded to your computer? In general, in order for a folder to become available offline, you’d need to right click on it and select the option “make available offline” from the dropdown menu.

I’d just like to make sure that nothing else happened that wouldn’t be expected.

MettaSong

I did the same thing. I accidentally started a sync offline of a huge amount of files and am trying to find a way to stop it. I only have 6GB left on my hard drive and can't afford for all these files to download. My intention was to click the put file online only, but accidentally clicked the wrong button. Ooops! I paused the download, but I don't want to pause - I was to cancel and stop this from happening. I tried rebooting my computer, hoping that would cancel the download - nope.

I can't afford the time or the disk space for all those files to download to my hard drive.

Is there a way to cancel these types of syncing downloads? This has happened to me in the past and it is really annoying. Mistakes happen. This doesn't seem like it would be that complicated to have an option that says stop syncing. Am I missing something?

Hannah

Hey @MettaSong, sorry to hear about this.

Pausing syncing won't do the trick, because at some point you'll need to unpause, so the sync will need to finish anyway.

I think the next best thing here is to unlink the computer from your account, delete the Dropbox folder and the Dropbox app and reinstall it again from scratch.

To unlink the computer, you can either delete it from your connected devices or sign out of the app.

I hope this helps.

Hitch

And Hannah, then what? If they have a huge amount of files, will the disconnected device ever be allowed to sign in again? One of my workers can't get his DB files because they're over 500,000. When his laptop and fob were stolen, Dropbox told him that without the registered device, he could only download a paltry number of files per day, so he'd be downloading for a month or more.

Everybody here notice there's NO answer for this? You CAN'T STOP a SYNCH. That's the bottom line if you stupidly click to synch the dropbox, you're screwed. Until it's done, you're dead in the water.

Hitch

ceso

Hi - I am having the same issue whereby I accidentally clicked the "cloud" icon on my Apple computer and now the entire folder and subfolder are syncing and I can't stop it. This folder has literally dozens of GBs within it so I want to STOP the sync not just pause it — because I need to sync other things. What to do???

Jay

Hi @ceso, have you tried right clicking that folder and marking it as online-only again? This would return it to the previous state and stop the downloading of files.

Octavio Warnock-Graham

Please give us the option of hard canceling out of synching as it is an enormous time waster on those rare occasions users accidentally synch a top-level folder.

I'm losing hours out of my day as Dropbox re-indexes and downloads my old folder system.

TomMunch

I'm having a similar issue. I added a folder to Dropbox on my desktop Mac that defaulted to syncing to my laptop. I unchecked the folder from Dropbox on my laptop, but it didn't stop the sync. I then actually deleted the folder from Dropbox online and on my Mac desktop, and it's still trying to sync 100,000 files that no longer exist. Ugh. I'm sure I'm going to run out of disk space on my laptop, and meanwhile new files that I'd like to sync to online Dropbox and my desktop Mac and from my laptop and access from my phone and iPad are not showing up because I guess they are lost in the cue behind these other 100,000 files.

Walter

Hi there @TomMunch - sorry to hear about this.

If this persists after rebooting your computer or quitting and relaunching the app, could you send us a screenshot of the app's status so that we can have a visual too?

TomMunch

I signed out and back in, and after it indexed all my files it no longer was trying to sync the deleted files.

TomMunch

So it says it's done syncing now, and all the files that were deleted including the folder are absent.

Hannah

Glad to hear that, @TomMunch.

If you have any other issues, let us know.

Have a great day!