Files automatically shifting to cloud only

Thanks for the reply!

Everything is always 100% up to date on my computer. I work from my 16-inch MacBookPro with the M1 Max Chip—version 13.2.1. I have the DropBox App-version 169.4.5684.

95% or so of my files have been on "available offline." (I need quick access to them.) As reported in the initial message, shortly after the latest DropBox update that moves where/how files are stored on the local drive, most of my files went into an "online only" mode automatically. I changed these to "available offline" (as they were before), only to have many of them automatically switch to "online only" again.

My hard drive currently has 750 GB available and a capacity of 995 GB. Prior to these DropBox changes/glitches, I had roughly 820 GB available. DropBox seems to have duplicated some of these files someway, but I cannot find them, do not have access to them, and they do not come up in any kind of search of the computer. Additionally, DropBox files no longer show up under the first set of displays within the "manage storage" options. I have run CleanMyMac several times, that does not fix anything, including the clear purgeable space settings.

Thank you for your help.

Another issue is that the file search functions no longer work/no longer open files. This update is proving to be very annoying and disruptive to my work. I have thousands of documents, articles, reports that I work with and use the search function all the time. I've been a DropBox customer for a decade but will have to move on if functionality doesn't return to what it was. DropBox has been so good for so long.

Hannah

Hey @DrAJP, what you're describing does sound like expected after the update of the Dropbox app to the new Dropbox for macOS version.

You can read more about that here.

As for the search function are you referring to Spotlight?

If so, can you follow these steps, to see if they help?

Open the Dropbox folder in Finder, wait a little while, then retry the Spotlight search.
Since the Dropbox folder was moved to a new location with the new macOS update, it needs to be re-indexed. Opening the folder can prompt this.
Another reason is that the entire disk might need to be reindexed.
- Note: The help article mentions the Documents folder, but you need to use the Dropbox folder instead.
- Also note: In some cases the entire hard disk may need to be re-indexed.

Thanks, I'm aware of all that. It's not working the way it should. And it worked far, far better before. Dropbox needs to revert to the way it was or I'll be taking my business elsewhere. It needs to be easy to find and use files.

Would be great to get real followup and acknowledgment that the latest update to the Dropbox software needs to be reversed or greatly modified.

Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, I haven't been able to find anything.

As far as I understand it, I have Dropbox on my Win 11 PC set up to make everything available offline, as per this screenshot:

However, most documents do not appear to be available offline. Some folders have the green tick icon, but most folders have the grey cloud icon. Here's a sample:

I selected everything, right-clicked, Dropbox, Make available offline and then Dropbox appears to start making things available offline. But then after a few hours it stops again, and maybe one or two more folders are available offline. I've repeated this process four times and still most are not available offline.

I've shut down Dropbox and restarted it. I've rebooted the PC. Dropbox is telling me that I've set it so that everything should be available offline, but it's not doing that.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a known issue? Is it being worked on?

Thanks very much in advance!

Tim.

Hi @TimUnleashed, let's jump right into this!

Can you clarify which version of the Dropbox app you're using, along with its syncing status?

You should be able to locate both, by hovering your mouse over the little Dropbox icon, next to your WiFi on your task bar.

Do you recall when this behavior started happening maybe?

Keep me posted!

Hey Megan,

Thanks!

Sure, the version is v185.4.6054 and the status is Up to Date.

This is a new PC so it's only been happening for a few days, since I installed.

I'm thinking that perhaps it might be constructive to uninstall Dropbox, delete all the files, then reinstall Dropbox and see if I end up with the same issue again. What do you think?

Hey @TimUnleashed, thanks for letting me know.

It's interesting, because it's usually the other way around, and not folders/files becoming online-only.

One more thing to check: if you open and check the folders that turn from available offline, to online-only what is the state of the files in them? How are they syncing?

Hey Megan,

I should clarify. It's not that they have gone from being available offline, to not being available offline.

It's simply that they started out (on this install of Dropbox on this new PC) as being not available offline (because that appears to be the default settings when you install the app nowadays, I think?) and so I thought that going into settings and changing the default settings to what you see in my earlier screenshot, that this would trigger Dropbox to start making everything available offline.

When it didn't (and everything still appeared to be cloud-only), I then (in Windows Explorer) selected everything, right-clicked and told it to make available offline. It responds by starting to synch, but it then tells me it's done and it's only synched a few things.

So, when I go into a folder that looks like it's cloud-only, all the contents are also cloud-only, ie unchanged since the initial installation.

I should add that I've been a Dropbox user since back in the very early days, within a year or two of its creation I reckon, so very experienced with it, and this behaviour definitely just seems buggy.

Anything else you'd like me to do or check before I uninstall, delete files, reinstall, screenshot the default settings that appear when I install and screenshot the default file structure (cloud/offline) as it happens?

Oh, I see thank you for clarifying @TimUnleashed!

Let me clarify: the save hard drive space automatically feature, only applies to files and folders you haven't opened in quite some time, or with files that you add online, and that they sync locally to the device.

As for you right clicking, and selecting for files/folders to be available offline, that was the right way to go on about it. It's odd though, that some of them didn't change.

If you try it in smaller batches, does it work? Let's go with 20 folders/files each time, for instance.

Thanks Megan,

Understood.

Yes, if I select a single folder and right click etc to make it available offline it works.

But if I select all of them it just does some of them.

And based on the settings I've set, I shouldn't have to be doing it with any of them, right? It should be automatically happening with all of them.

Thanks.

Also, I just selected seven folders, right clicked and asked it to make them available offline and it looks like it's successfully synched all 7. So your batching idea does work.

What we're left with is that I can manually solve the problem, but the settings in the app doesn't appear to be doing anything 🙂

Hannah

Hey @TimUnleashed, just to clarify another thing, apart from the 'save hard drive space automatically' setting, the 'new files default' setting refers to new files that you will add from now on, either through the website or other linked devices.

So that wouldn't affect the files already in your Dropbox folder.

I'm glad to see that batch-switching the files from online-only to offline worked, though.

You can also try right-clicking the Dropbox folder itself and switching it to available offline; that should work as well.

If you need anything else, please let us know!

Hey Hannah,

Thanks. Yep, I understand the setting about new files only.

The point is that at no point did all of my existing files synch, even though all I ever tried to do was make that happen.

I did them all batch by batch last night, so can't test any further.

But I think the key take-away here is that the current Dropbox settings don't do what they say on the box. Bug report?

Martha G

I'm using Windows 10 and having a very similar problem. Trying to sync files to new computer. Of the folders I selected in selective sync, one downloaded without a problem. But several are not downloading at all and are still marked with the cloud icon in Explorer.

I just tried selecting all, including the folders I wanted to keep cloud-only. Files from the added folders started to sync, and the blue syncing icon appeared in Windows Explorer. But nothing happened with the originally selected folders And now all the folders have stopped syncing and the cloud icon has reappeared. Dropbox now says "up to date." I have plenty of space on my computer and in my Dropbox.

I've also been using Dropbox for years and I have never had this problem before.

My version, installed about a week ago, is v186.4.6207

Hannah

Hey @Martha G, sorry to see that you're having this issue.

If you right-click the Dropbox folder itself, and choose "make available offline" for the whole thing, what do you see?

Martha G

Thank you, that has made a big difference -- Dropbox has now started downloading a lot of files. It still says "up to date" and not all the folders have syncing icons, but none of them have cloud only icons any more. So it looks like the problem is fixed. Much appreciated!