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Online-only folders - can these be made visible on desktop app?

Hello,

We have a business licences with you for 4 licenses. We use Macs all up to current OS.

I am trying to re configure our office network folders within Dropbox but need guidance to achieve this as we’ve had some problems thus far with shared folders and incorrectly syncing to our computers such that it filled the hard drive and caused a collapse.

I am starting the process afresh and would request your guidance on how I achieve the following please?

1. Each work station has current projects or job folders that are within a desk top Drop Box folder app, synced to online for back up. This is all fine with no change required.

2. JOBFILES FOLDER

We have an archive of all past jobs which is some 90 thousand files in a folder called JOB FILES.

The intension is to have the JOB FILES folder stored on Dropbox online via our Admin work station.

This folder is accessed periodically to search and pull out old files as may be required, and to upload new files every month.

This folder therefore needs to be visible on each desktop - but not synced to save hard drive space.

Should this folder be set up as a Shared folder or simply a standard folder that can be shared afterwards within the team?

3. CURRENT FOLDER

This is to be set up similarly to the JOB FILES in that it needs to be visible on each desk top.

We will drop work daily work files into this folder on a regular basis during each day.

The files within sit there until they are sorted and put to their respective job folders within the JOB FILES folder mentioned above.

It is preferred that this folder is not synced to the computer hard drives either to save space.

4. What are the implications of the desk top computer used to set up these files.

We have an admin desk top computer that is used as the base point for setting up all admin such as common drop box folders.

For convenience, I did set up the above folders on my own laptop, as shared folders. I thought this would be no other than if setting up on the admin computer as all files are shared equally anyway.

I now wonder if this would-be better that all folders are set up within the admin desktop computer’s DB licence, if that makes sense as keeps my own laptop clear of admin stuff.

Maybe it makes no difference in terms of DB sharing?

If you could please get back to me ASAP with any advice, as I’m keen to get this all done this week to allow us to get up and running again.

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Megan

Hi @Nee gibson architects, thanks for posting here today!

Apologies for the length of my response, I just wanted to make sure I've covered everything.

In regards to your JOBFILES FOLDER and CURRENT FOLDER folders, I think the best way to go about it, would be to either create those folders as Team folders, or as shared folders, from the admin's profile.

Since you're using a Business plan, you can go with Team folders, because they would give you more control. However, the decision is entirely up to you.

In terms of syncing those to your device, you can make those folders available online-only. That way, they won't be taking up extra hard drive space, and you'd be able to see them inside your Dropbox folder on the computer. When you need to sync any file locally, you can recall them.

Where are the copies of these folders located at the moment? Do you have them created or stored somewhere?

As for your last point, it's not entirely clear to me how you set up the folders. Did you use a different Dropbox account or your admin account, on a different laptop? If you used a different one, was it a personal one, or was it part of your Team?

Keep me posted!

All comments

Megan

Hi @Nee gibson architects, thanks for posting here today!

Apologies for the length of my response, I just wanted to make sure I've covered everything.

Since you're using a Business plan, you can go with Team folders, because they would give you more control. However, the decision is entirely up to you.

Where are the copies of these folders located at the moment? Do you have them created or stored somewhere?

Keep me posted!

nee gibson architects

Hi, thanks for the interest and reply.

There are 4 computers, each with their own licence. One is the admin.

I have been using normal folders and just sharing them with the others in 'Team' or two employees ( we're a very small practice).

We've had another go at setting up normal folders on the admin license. This has clarified to us that if the folder is set to be online only ( by going through the desktop admin/ preferences/ sync setting and un ticking selected folders) then that folder is no longer visible on our any of our desktop apps ( in our Mac finder panels). If we make reviser that setting and tick the folders again, they appear in our finders - but also start a ponderous upload /download sync that crashes our computers due to the 89K files. We seem to understand this better now.

That said, we are still wanting to drag & drop new files into these 'shared' folders on a daily basis, but can't easily do so if they are not visible on in the Finders. Instead we have to log into the web browser version of DB account and upload to there which is more time consuming.

I had used a Teams folder before for an external contact and ended up being charged by DB for an additional licence and so I'm wary of setting up new Teams folders for that reason. However perhaps Teams folder is the way to manage what we need if used internally within our business members.

Does this help your advice to us?

It's quite a specific way we need it to work for our needs but hopefully there is a way, which will increase our valued use of our annual subscription!

Regards

Adrian

Rich

@nee gibson architects wrote:
... if the folder is set to be online only ( by going through the desktop admin/ preferences/ sync setting and un ticking selected folders) then that folder is no longer visible on our any of our desktop apps

That's not setting a folder to Online-only. That's the Selective Sync feature which is used to entirely remove a folder from a computer so it no longer takes up disk space.

That said, we are still wanting to drag & drop new files into these 'shared' folders on a daily basis, but can't easily do so if they are not visible on in the Finders.

What you want is what was previously known as Smart Sync. All you need to do is right-click a folder in your local Dropbox folder and you'll see an option that either says Make online-only or Make available offline. Selecting Make online-only will remove the folder (or file) from your computer to save disk space but it will still remain visible so you can interact with it.