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My files keep getting switched to "online-only" (Mac)

This week it happened twice that I open my dropbox folder and all my files have been offloaded.

Despite the fact that I explicitly put in the settings that my files should be kept offline. (see attachments)

The second time was particularly unfortunate, because it was in an 8hrs flight, in which i was planning on working on my phd thesis.

I am sorry, but this is really not acceptable that dropbox offloads my files at random, in particular if the computer is not connected to the internet. I have been a dropbox customer since ~2014 and this never happened before.

Even from a coding perspective it is not so complicated to offload and download the files one by one, instead of offloading all of them and then downloading all of them. Which would have probably saved me in this scenario.

In order to be able to avoid loosing ~6hrs of work I had to pay 25USD to delta to be able to download the files and work.

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Rich

@albe_rola wrote:

Despite the fact that I explicitly put in the settings that my files should be kept offline.

I can't speak to why it happened and I'll leave that for the Mac experts, but that setting doesn't do what you believe it does.

The How do you want to store new files? option specifically refers to new files that are synced down to the computer from your account (i.e. new files added to Dropbox.com or from another device). Such files will sync down to the computer and be marked as available offline.

It's not a setting to tell Dropbox to keep all of your files available offline. For that, you should be able to select your files, right-click and select Make available offline. Once synced, the sync icon would be a green circle with a white check mark on each file.

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Hannah

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

Are you currently using the Dropbox for macOS on File Provider version of the Dropbox app?

Also, do you happen to be low on hard drive space?

If both of the above are true, then this is expected behavior for this version of the app.

You can see more expected changes and scenarios about this version here.

We do appreciate your feedback, though, and I'll make sure to pass your comments along to the team.

Thanks again.

Rich

@albe_rola wrote:

Despite the fact that I explicitly put in the settings that my files should be kept offline.

I can't speak to why it happened and I'll leave that for the Mac experts, but that setting doesn't do what you believe it does.

albe_rola

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Indeed my Dropbox is on File Provider, and I have 17GB of disk space. Which I do not personally consider low, but maybe it's below the threshold.

Then if I can make my feedback more precise: the way the sync preferences are currently displayed is very misleading. Because the "available offline" option is the only option there that is about keeping files offline. If there was an option to make it so that the default is that the files are always available offline (instead of right-clicking each folder), then the distinction would be clearer.