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I want to see all my folders, online or -off, in OSX Finder.

I am moving into a new Mac. Installed the desktop app. I have always had a dropbox folder available in finder where I can easily see everything stored on my DB, and bveen able to right-click and choose which ones to have off line and on. Now it seems I can only achieve this by choosing EVERYTHING in my DB to be offline/visible in Finder, and then go through all of them and decide which ones should be offline. The problem is, this seems to overwhelm the app, while syncing my 1,1 TB of crap to my too small system drive. It doesn't seem to react when I try to jump in and choose "online only" for as many large folders as possible, the app is busy, doggedly syncing a lot of data I just want to keep organized and visible but not on my actual drive. There has to be a reasonable way to configure this from the start, right?

Thank You

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Accepted answers

JohnnyB9000

OK - My previous post was not correct. Even having the root dropbox folder made available offline was not sufficient and didn't pull down new folders, but...

Here's the solution:

Right-click on the dropbox icon on the menu bar, click on your little profile icon (JB, in my case), and click View sync issues:
Screenshot 2024-07-31 at 9.21.40 PM.png

Then notice the link at the bottom and click "Open Settings":
Screenshot 2024-07-31 at 9.30.27 PM.png
This brings you to a very suitable interface for selecting exactly what I wanted.

Yes, during the install I guess I was using a feature called "selective sync". That's very neat, but I didn't remember that it was called that, so didn't know to search for it for help. But also, why is such a first class feature in such a terrible place for discoverability? Why isn't it somewhere findable?

All comments

Megan

Hi @Svante Loden, let's jump right into this!

When you say that you can now achieve this when choosing everything in your Dropbox folder to be offline, are you referring to the start-up page when you first install the app, or later on once the app is finally installed to the device?

Do you have issues with the app not syncing the changes when you choose "online only" for your files/folders?

Can you clarify the app's current syncing status, along with the version you're using on your end?

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

Svante Loden

- No, after installing, I could only see the ones I had chosen during installation. I chose very few because my drive is smaller than what's on dropbox. Then I tried to add folders to the list of visible things - that's when syncing mayhem started. Right now, I have managed to first choose a few more folders (important ones) to be visible, then repeatedly right-clicking on them and choosing "online only" - dropbox was busy syncing something like 44000 files and did not give any feedback when I did this, so I left it over the night and now those folders look OK. It's just very impractical and weird. It would mean at least a day's work to do it this way.

Do you have issues with the app not syncing the changes when you choose "online only" for your files/folders?

Yes, they take forever to change status and there's no feedback - the app seems busy "syncing" stuff I do not want synced.

Can you clarify the app's current syncing status, along with the version you're using on your end?

It says "Your files are up to date" but that's only because I couldn't handle adding everything I need to have visible but online in one go. Or even five.

I would have expected a chance to make these choices during installation, with clear definitions and options for hidden, visible, online, and offline files/folders. Very confusing and impractical to me.

Version is v184.4.6543 on Silicon Mac OS Ventura 13.6

Thanks for helping!

Hannah

Hey @Svante Loden, thanks for the additional info and the feedback on this.

When you sync the folders, by updating the selective sync settings, do these folder sync to your computer as "available offline" or as "online-only"?

Also, you might need to change your bandwidth settings, for syncing to go faster; perhaps it's limited?

Svante Loden

I belive I am giving it all the bandwith that I have with no limits. It’s a 4g modem, so not monstrous, but covers most of my needs, even for larger video files.

No, when I chose what folders should be visible, it started syncing. There was no other option. Has something gone wrong during my installation or is it just redesigned in a way that doesn’t really work with my preferred way of using it? Will I find the options I need if I reinstall carefully?
Thank you

Hannah

Hey Svante!

The app should definitely start syncing, when you update the selective sync settings and you choose which folders to sync.

However, can you confirm that they're actually syncing as available offline? Meaning, when a folder finishes syncing, does it take up hard drive space?

You can test this with just one small folder, if you want.

Svante Loden

Thank you,
Yes, they start syncing immediately until they have a green check mark. Then I can theoretically make them online only.

Megan

Hi @Svante, thank you so much for all the info you've provided so far!

Would you be able to send me a few screenshots of the process you follow on your end as a step-by-step, in order for me to have a visual too?

I'd more than appreciate it!

antho15

Exactly the same issue here...

Did you find the solution ?

Thanks,
A.

Hannah

Hey @antho15, sorry to see you're having trouble.

Can you please describe the issue you're facing on your end?

Also, which OS are you using and which Dropbox version?

You can see this info, by hovering over your Dropbox icon.

Please make sure to let us know the sync status of the app as well.

JohnnyB9000

I'm having basically the same issue. I installed Dropbox on my new Mac. At that time, I selected a subset of the overall folders I needed to actually sync because I didn't want my computer attempting a large sync right then. Now, I need to get some larger folders for a project, but I don't see anywhere I can initiate that from the desktop app. It only sees the folders I synced initially and there's no UI element to let me select others. The UI action is to right-click the items to change the setting, but these files haven't yet been pulled to my local machine yet, so there's nothing to select.

I figured that would be OK, because I could just go to dropbox.com and surely there would be an option there to start syncing those folders locally...but no, there isn't:( I mean, it's fine that the desktop app isn't readily aware of all folders I might have in the cloud, but it's not fine that I can't push those files from the cloud onto my desktop in the dropbox folder structure. I can download files from the web app, but I don't want to download them to an arbitrary location, I want them to be downloaded into my dropbox and to start syncing from this machine when I make changes.

Here's the flow:

After installation of the desktop on my Mac I can see:
dropbox/folder 1/filesAndFolders.stuff

dropbox/folder 2/filesAndFolders.stuff

The folders in question are 2 folders down from my dropbox root, so now, I want to start syncing:
dropbox/folder 3/subfolder 1/filesIWant.stuff

But I can't even see folder 3 in the desktop app to configure it. Even if I could, I don't want everything in folder 3, I just want subfolder 1. My only option is to right-click on the root dropbox folder, sync ALL OF IT, then select everything I DIDN'T WANT (most of the files!) and tell them to sync as "online-only", while dropbox is using all its CPU to sync rather than listen for my commands, so the performance is sluggish. This seems like the same thing the OP was annoyed by. I don't know what else to try other than to fill up my entire disk with dropbox stuff I don't want on this particular machine, then go and push stuff to online-only manually after that pain.

That's not how I want things to work. I want to pull my files out from dropbox on specific machines for specific projects. I don't care whether it's done on the desktop client/finder integration stuff or through dropbox.com webapp, but I need to be able to do that easily or be told the better way to do it.

JohnnyB9000

cwill918

I just got a new Mac and was setting up my Dropbox and very quickly identified the exact same concerns you raised in your original post. Thanks so much for posting the solution 🙂

Theresa

Hey, I'm Theresa, one of the Community Managers here at Dropbox. I'm happy to see that this thread sorted out your issue @cwill918 ! I'm curious about how you're using Dropbox I'd really love to hear if you have any tips or tricks, or if you have any questions for us. If you are up for sharing? ✨

jaadoogar

Thank you JohnnyB9000 for posting this solution! Lifesaver.

TysonKonker

Hey Dropbox, this should not be this difficult to find. Fix it.

pengwendolen

Oh my god, you are a lifesaver. THANK YOU. I used selective sync thinking it would only dictate what was saved offline and hadn't realized it meant I wouldn't be able to see the unsynced folders at all in the desktop app. I wanted them *visible* so I could easily find them when I did happen to need them, and then in order to do things like open a .psd file, I had to download it into a NEW place on my computer, instead of the folder where it was already neatly organized. (So I guess the best option is to have everything synced and then go back and mark things online only?)

Anyway, this just saved my day, thank you so much.