Child Item

Set Dropbox to ignore a file or folder

There is a Help article on how to do this.
It says "Hover over DropBox icon and choose Ignore..." These instructions are incorrect

Misleading article: How to set a file or folder to be ignored - Dropbox Help

The instructions for Windows say Right Click & Choose "Don't Sync to DropBox.com",
The option is not present on the context menu (Win 10 & Win11)

The Help article should say
Use the PowerShell command. It's the only way to unsync a file or folder

Please fix the article

Spilly82

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spilly82

@Walter

Perhaps you would pass on my last point to the developers
- just automate the issue

I suggest it could be quite simple:
If a Folder is found in the DropBox tree with SYSTEM Ownership, then DropBox should never copy or attempt to restore the folder or its contents. In my example the Search Folder Owner is SYSTEM, and so are all its children of course.

That would fix my Sync issues with Windows Search

All comments

Walter

Hi there @spilly82 - thanks for flagging this with us.

I've passed your comments on to the team and you can let us know if you have anything else to add.

Cheers!

spilly82

I'd comment that the Powershell command appears to work

I've been struggling with this minor irritant for a while now. I have moved my DropBox root just below the root of a separate Data drive and configured Windows Search to index the whole drive.

I find that Windows Search can create a "Search" folder within the DropBox tree. I, as Admin, do NOT have full rights over the subfolders. Dropbox logs many sync errors. I've written this up in another post.

I'm guessing the Search folder is workspace for the indexing process. NB I think Search leaves all folders empty on termination.
Poor old Dropbox doesn't understand what's going on if it syncs during indexing (as by design it should).
And the DropBox system tray icon ends up with irritating permanent errors about deleted temporary files & folders. The error Tree is D:\Users\username\DropBox\Search\Data\Temp\usgthrsvc\...

I used Powershell to ignore the subfolder named Data.

It would be good if the Dropbox app could figure this out and suspend sync for children of usgthrsvc .

spilly82

@Walter

Perhaps you would pass on my last point to the developers
- just automate the issue

That would fix my Sync issues with Windows Search

Jay

Hi @spilly82, we appreciate the feedback on this matter and have informed the appropriate teams of your observations.
We take all comments into consideration when improving the Dropbox site and linked services.