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Disk space full with online only syncing

Everything in my dropbox folder is set as online only for syncing. However I can no longer save a file to the drop box as it is saying my disc space is full.

I thought online only with smart sync means nothing is stored on your computors hard drive. Where am I going wrong?

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Chris_J

Hello @paigewilliamson

Thanks for reaching out to us. First off, are you sure it is talking about HardDrive space instead of Dropbox account? if so, Dropbox still needs to place a placeholder for you to view your files.

Can you check to see how much space it says your Dropbox folder is? If on PC, right click on Dropbox folder and select Properties. If on Mac, use get info in finder. Als,o check to see if you still have space in your Dropbox account. Was your Harddrive close to full before Dropbox?

Hopes this helps

All comments

Chris_J

Hello @paigewilliamson

Thanks for reaching out to us. First off, are you sure it is talking about HardDrive space instead of Dropbox account? if so, Dropbox still needs to place a placeholder for you to view your files.

Hopes this helps

wagneragency

I have the exact same problem as the other person. Even on online-only, Dropbox is trying to download all of the files.

Chris_J

Hellow wagneragency

Thanks for reaching out to us. If the files are online-only, it will still need to have a placeholder, to signify there is something online. So if you added something at work and you made them online-only then it will not change the setting on the home computer if its different than work. To change the default settings for Smart Sync, please go to your preferences by clicking on Dropbox icon, then click on Gear icon, then preferences, see the settings in the Sync Tab. But once its set the same as your Work computer, it should just download a placeholder. Which has a different icon on the file See this https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/smart-sync

If you are added to a Business Account, then it's possible that the Admin changes this behavior and then you need to contact him/her

Hopes this helps

wagneragency

I have the admin rights. With 100 GB of available space, I shouldn't be running out just for the placeholder files which are probably very small.

Chris_J

Are you a member of a Business Team? Are you sharing any folders? How much quota are you allowed in your Dropbox Account? https://www.dropbox.com/account/plan

ejroihkn

I am the adminstrator of a dropbox business team, we have 8 TB of space for files on our Dropbox account. Our team uses iMacs with 3 TB hard drives and our dropbox files were taking up over 2 TB. I decided to set some older files to "online only" and left my computer for the weekend. When I came back I discovered that ALL my dropbox files were resyncing (hundreds of thousands of files) and that my free HD space was rapidly disappearing. Now my HD is full and I can no longer sync new files. Before I enabled smart sync I had nearly 500 GB of free storage space. What could be going on here?

Editrix

Whatever happened with this?

The same thing is happening to me. I went through and changed a bunch of my folders to Online-Only, but when I re-click on them, they're still set to Local and now ALL my folders are syncing!

Chris_J

Hello Editrix

What happened is whats its supposed to do. When you click on a file, it will return to local only since its has to be local to show your the file.

Editrix1

Sorry, I should have been more precise—I'm right-clicking on the file to check that it is still set to Online Only. Are you saying that even that action will then reactivate it to being Local, so I will never be able to see a confirming little checkmark next to Online Only when I right-click a file?

Chris_J

Hello Editrix1

Thanks for clarifying things. The action that you describe shouldn't change the settings from online to local. I was explaining that if you click on the file itself, it will change it from online to local. It will change it to local and then you would have to manually change it back to online after that.

It sounds like that you did not click on the file but you just right clicked the file to bring up the contextual menu to see the status, correct?

if it changed on that action, then something wrong. Did you notice what badge is shown on that file? is it a grey type cloud or is it green?

If it is indeed changing on just right-clicking the file then I suggest reinstalling Dropbox. I just did some test on my PC and it doesn't change it by the contextual menu.

Hopes this helps