Deleted folders keep reappearing

I have been undertaking he massive re-filing project and found the same issue. Flders would not stay deleted.

My solution was to go to the online folder and I found files not showing up on my computer. These contained illegal characters in their names - ?|: etc. I renamed each one - using simple names like Amos - and then could delete the folder. At renaming they all showed up in my synced file.

This built on some of the advice above - thank you everyone.

Rich

AmosMoses wrote:
II found files not showing up on my computer. These contained illegal characters in their names - ?|: etc.

You can use the Bad Files Check to list any files in your account that could cause a syncing problem.

Using the Bad Files Check to check for file that were not syncing revealed other folders I had been unable to delete. Renaming these - online - fixed this issue for me again.

I am sorry to be a nuisance, but i am not seeing how to accept this as a solution on my browsers - I have tried Firefox, Edge and Chrome. I am logged in.

The bad-file-check revealed some .webloc-files with bad characters, e.g. «http-::makezine.com:.webloc».

There are hundreds of them in my account. Is there a way to rename these automatically somehow in Dropbox?

Also it would be very helpful if the Dropbox client could indicate problems like these with an icon and maybe some more information in the app. Right now if feels like I have absolutely no control over what Dropbox does and silently failing is definitely not a good thing to do.

I agree this is an issue with web files - I re-named a few but know I will have broken them. I went through everything on-line - just as it seemed more robust.

I do get a message now when trying to name a document with bad characters telling me it is not allowed. In Windows 10.

cappa12434

I tried both Travel R. and Janet H.4's solutions and they didn't work, or they worked in combination with signing in to my account online and delete the second folder manually, but be careful, I noticed online that the duplicate folder had a folder that the original folder didn't have, maybe there was some glitch or corruption going on there, so I selected that folder inside the duplicate folder I was trying to delete and moved over to the original folder I am trying to keep. After that I deleted the duplicate folder online and now Dropbox works fine! No more duplicate folder keep popping up. So idk if it was a combination of these three solution or what, maybe try my solution deleting the duplicate online (MAKE SURE folders are all same you don't want to lose anything), if that doesn't work try Travel R and Janet H.4's solutions. I think deleting old devices that Janet H.4 suggested should be done anyways.

Would be nice if one of the staff members could say something about this issue.

My main problem was dragging files from the internet browser to my dropbox – mostly .weblog or image-files which contains a character like «|» or «:».

What makes this really bad is that the Dropbox App does not complain. If I sync a folder which contains files with bad characters (which somehow were uploaded to Dropbox anyway) the folder on my Mac looks like it was empty, the green iocn symbolizes that it is synced correctly and that there are no files left to be synced. I deleted a lot of these empty folders from my Dropbox, so I deleted a lot of my files accidentally, because on my computer it showed up as empty, but in reality the folder was not empty.

DROPBOX TEAM: This is serious!!

If it where not for selective syncing and tag-support I would leave Dropbox because of this now.

For others – this seems to work:

- Go to Dropbox Bad Files Check

- Manually rename all reported files on the Dropbox website

- Check again if all errors have been corrected

This is a tedious process when you have thousands of bad files. So prepare for hours of manual renaming

I just noticed that even after I renamed all files listed in the bad-filename-checker on the Dropbox website the folders still show up empty in macOS Finder, but with a green mark that they are synced. The green synced-indicator-icons cannot be trusted anymore

I just tried to contact the support, when I clicked on «Send» a new page showed up where I can enter a question – I have no idea if my support ticket made it to the developers or not. Really bad usability here. I fear all the text I wrote is lost.

So disappointed in Dropbox!

Hi TSP.

Have you tried @DaveC2reply on the first page?

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app/Deleted-folders-keep-reappearing/m-p/20323#M4750

Hi TSP.

Have you tried @DaveC2reply on the first page? He added a file to the folder to delete it. Someone else suggested that there may be some previous versions of a file in a folder stopping it being deleted.

I hope this helps you.

atecklenburg

thank you sou much - that helped! I hope this bug will be fixed soon - it is not very "Dropbox-like" to have such stupid bugs..

PMicml

I think it's actually @Ziaul H.1 's answer:

I've tried many of the suggestions posted before, nothing worked. But this one did. Thank you.

(so I added an empty notepad file to the folder and then could simply delete it without reappearing)

PMicml

Thanks. This one finally worked for me

It doesn't work!

Nope. This didn't work either.

Tried this too. It allowed me to delete the original but then when I wanted to delete the empty copy I just made it kept reappearing like the old one did.

How do you "unselect it for sync"?

FoxL

I had this problem for 6 months. I had 2 Dropbox logins for the same business and I logged out as one and logged in on the other via the web version, not the desktop one. I discovered that my laptop hadn't synced for 6 months on that email login and once I left it to sort itself out, the problem finally rectified. Try to login in on every device you have via the web version and allow them all time to sync completely, then delete the files if they turn up anywhere. Sorry, not a very techo reply I know but that's what finally worked for me!