Child Item

Cannot access Shared Folder

Advice please,

I have been using dropbox without any issues for a long time, via my laptop, phone, tablet and dropbox.com, 24hours ago that all changed.

I have a shared folder with my partner, my partner did some housekeeping to tidy up the folder. Since then I have not been able to access many of the sub folders on my laptop. Neither my partner nor myself changed any settings to the folders or our individual dropbox accounts.

I can see all of the folders on dropbox.com, in the dropbox app on my phone and tablet but cannot see or access these folders via the desktop app on windows 10.

I have searched the online help, which suggests a syncing issue and to check that the folders are shared. We have checked they are shared and have made no changes to the application settings for syncing.

I then proceeded to delete the dropbox application and re-install it on my desktop to see if that improved the situation, re-installing using all the recommended settings. Things get stranger here, the dropbox desktop app that re-installed doesn't open up as an 'App' like it did before, it just opens the windows file explorer.

There hadn't been any software updates when this occured. We were both actually using dropbox when these issues occurred. I have run clean-up tools and done a complete virus scan, etc.

Any suggestions on what has gone wrong, and what I can do to access these files again on my laptop? Whilst I can view/see the files on dropbox.com, phone and tablet. I cannot use them, as I need to use the software on my laptop to do this, these programs are not cloud based.

Help!

Find more posts tagged with

Desktop

Sync

Insightful

Closed - Partially Delivered

Accepted answers

DarranJ

Ok, I got help on this issue via Dropbox support over on Twitter.

Issue solved - There were invalid characters in folder names, that prevented the folders from showing in Windows. The problem seemed to be specific to windows dropbox app hence being able to see the folders on all other devices and MacBook.

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/files-not-syncing

All comments

DarranJ

Additional information:

I have also noticed that in the windows file explorer the icons have changed next to folders/files, some have a tick in a solid green circle, some have a green tick in a white circle. I also get the blue updating circle and there is the odd file that has a cloud icon. I only had the update icon and green circle icons before the above issues occurred.

Здравко

About icons, take a look here: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/sync-icons

DarranJ

Ok, I got help on this issue via Dropbox support over on Twitter.

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/files-not-syncing

rrmendez

I click on Shared Files and it freeze .. does not load have of he files already there .. I get a message that says " There is an error retrieving your account information "

also " something went wrong with your request refresh the page " but nothing happen

please help on this

Thanks

Megan

Happy Friday @rrmendez, sorry to hear about this!

Have you tried accessing our website through a different browser?

If I were you, I'd also try clearing the cache of the current one.

Can you give it a go, and let me know the results you find?

rrmendez

Hi .. lory

I cleaned the cache .. used another browser ... and nothing !! still the same problem . On the screen of " shared " i can see the Windows icon just going around and around trying to load files .. but nothing happens.

Megan

Thanks for the fast reply @rrmendez!

Can you send me a screenshot, re-creating what you see on your end?

rrmendez

Web capture www.dropbox.com.jpeg Web capture_17-9-2021_15551_www.dropbox.com.jpeg

Mark

Have you checked you have enough quota to access it @rrmendez ?

rrmendez

Lory , by quota you mean "space " ? ... I checked, on my account i could not do it ( see screenshot ) since it just freeze, them I was able to get the space though help.dropbox.com ( see Screenshot) .

dropbox space plan .jpeg Web capture space .jpeg Web capture space 2.jpeg

Megan

Thanks for the screenshots, @rrmendez!

Can you make sure that you disable any browser plugins and try again?

Also, if you access the page using an incognito tab on your browser, does it help?