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Shared files got moved and became copies only I can open

I have a ticket in but I need help it's been over a day.

Long story short when I updated my Mac yesterday it moved files from shared folders to a copy of it with the end saying "my name conflicted copy date". I'd like to know if I can rewind either the original or the copy so that the files go back to the correct place.

I've already disconnected Dropbox from my desktop. I just need to put things back the way they were. Any help is appreciated.

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Accepted answers

Hannah

Thanks for the ticket number, @mkcleary.

Were you perhaps editing the files in question during the computer update?

Perhaps other users were also on the files, while you were editing them?

Also, if you have settings on the files and folders that will change their permissions from the default ones assigned by your operating system, for instance when sharing content locally through a LAN or assigning symlinks to content inside of your Dropbox folder, then conflicted copies may be created because it is impossible to apply edits in these situations.

In any case, I would just suggest comparing the conflicted folders with the original ones, copy any files you need from the conflicted ones to the original ones and then delete the conflicted copies.

All comments

Hannah

Hey @mkcleary, thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community.

Have you taken a look at this article about conflicted copies, to see which case corresponds to your situation?

If you do need to rewind either a specific folder or your entire account, however, you can do so by following these steps.

Also, if you can send along the number of your ticket, that would be really helpful.

Thanks!

mkcleary

Thank you. I was afraid I was going to muck it up more. I'm wondering if bullet #3 happened during the update. I'll give these another review and try. The Ticket # is 22725166.

Hannah

Thanks for the ticket number, @mkcleary.

Were you perhaps editing the files in question during the computer update?

Perhaps other users were also on the files, while you were editing them?

In any case, I would just suggest comparing the conflicted folders with the original ones, copy any files you need from the conflicted ones to the original ones and then delete the conflicted copies.

mkcleary

Thank you, @hannah.

I actually was not even in Dropbox at the time; I was in a meeting. My computer did all this damage on its own without a virus. This weekend, I'll be going through all the hundreds of files and correcting the situation. I was hoping Dropbox could have reversed this for me.

AmaliaGiron

I'm struggling with exactly the same problem as @mkcleary!

Yesterday, I updated my Mac computer (macOS Sonoma version 14.0), and DropBox generated a "conflicted copy", and thousands of files from my shared folder were deleted!!!! ... and are not in the conflicted copy either.

This is a terrible mess! My coworkers are so upset that all the files were deleted.

I tried to rewind the shared folder, but DropBox says there is an internal problem and that the folder can not be rewind.

What can I do now???

supradyn

I have experienced the same issue after updating to Sonoma.

Multiple shared folders have missing files, and folders with "conflicted copy" in the name have taken their place (these folders are not shared). I am trying to manually recover everything from "conflicted copy" folders, but it seems clear that there is a problem with Dropbox and Sonoma.

Jay

Hi @supradyn, are your shared folders visible on this page on your account?

supradyn

Yes, the shared folders are visible on that page, but they were not visible locally (just the "conflicted copy" folders were). What I did was:

1) leave the shared folder from the page you linked to;

2) rejoin the shared folder from the same page (after this, the shared folder appeared locally again);

3) copy the content from the "conflicted copy" folder into the original shared folder.

This is obviously not an optimal solution, but it is the best I could come up with.

terchris

Same problem here. Updated to to latest mac os yesterday. All my source code is messed up. It will take weeks or months to manually check all the code.

This case must be moved from the first line of support to the guys who are responsible for creating Dropbox.

terchris

I have 28 thousand "conflicted copy" files. How many do you have?
If you want to see how many files contain the filename conflicted copy you can run this command:

find . -type f -name '*conflicted copy*' | wc -l

27848

I chatted with support. And they do not know how serious this is yet:

[Removed as per Community Guidelines]

terchris

I have 27,848 files that contain the text "conflicted copy".

When trying to merge files I notice that some of the files cannot be opened. There is some sort of lock on them.

As you see below the file named database.ts is there when I list it. But I cannot open it.

Has anyone seen this problem?

 cd config
tec@tecMacDev config % ls -la
total 48
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 tec  staff   384 Sep 25 11:19 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 31 tec  staff   992 Oct  5 22:48 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 tec  staff   218 May 24 09:01 admin.ts
-rw-r--r--@  1 tec  staff    97 May 24 09:01 api.ts
-rw-r--r--@  1 tec  staff  3188 Sep 25 10:58 database (tecMacDev's conflicted copy 2023-10-06).ts
-rw-------@  1 tec  staff  3333 Sep 24 20:26 database.ts
-rw-------@  1 tec  staff   153 May 28 13:40 globals.ts
-rw-r--r--@  1 tec  staff   222 May 24 09:01 middlewares.ts
-rw-r--r--@  1 tec  staff   117 Sep 25 11:19 plugins (tecMacDev's conflicted copy 2023-10-06).ts
-rw-------@  1 tec  staff   116 May 24 09:06 plugins.ts
-rw-r--r--@  1 tec  staff   235 Sep 25 10:58 server (tecMacDev's conflicted copy 2023-10-06).ts
-rw-------@  1 tec  staff   241 May 28 14:49 server.ts
tec@tecMacDev config % cat database.ts
cat: database.ts: Operation timed out
tec@tecMacDev config % sudo cat database.ts
Password:
cat: database.ts: Operation timed out
tec@tecMacDev config %

Walter

Hey @terchris, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Since you've contacted our support team about this, could you share your ticket ID so that we can look it up in our system as well?

Also, feel free to share more information such as your computer's OS version, the app's version and status, when you first noticed this etc.

Trailerman

Can we get an update on how this is resolved?