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My files are being deleted constantly when saved in the Dropbox folder on Mac OS

There is something wrong with my Dropbox. I've had it installed on my Mac for years and over the past several months files are being deleted shortly after I create them or drag them into the dropbox folder on my desktop.

Yesterday I saved several .docx files to a folder instead my dropbox through the desktop finder window to see them almost immediately disappear. In the online interface I could restore them through the "deleted files" window but then they would disappear again. On the events page it says that I was deleting them and restoring them multiple times.

I'm running Sequoia 15.3.2 on an M1 Max Mac Studio. The Dropbox folder is and always has been located on an external drive that is always plugged into the machine.

What's going on?

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Jay

Hi @zakladams, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Do you have any other apps or services that monitor or make changes to the Dropbox folder?

Is this occurring for any folder within the Dropbox folder itself? Are you able to add files from the Dropbox site without any issue?

This will help me to assist further!

zakladams

I don't think there are any apps that are making changes to the Dropbox folder. I have dozens of sub-folders in Dropbox, and haven't seen this behavior in all of them, but I have seen it in several in different places in the folder hierarchy.

It does seem like I can add files to Dropbox from the web interface without this behavior happening.

Jay

Could you try quitting all your open apps on your machine, apart from the Dropbox app, and then try adding a new file into the Dropbox folder, and let me know if this behavior repeats again?

zakladams

I tried this and it seems to be working, however, the deleting wasn't constant before. I upload many files to Dropbox every day and the weird deleting only seems to happen occasionally. There are always multiple apps open on my machine when it happens though.

Jay

This could mean that one of the open apps is somehow deleting the new files added to the Dropbox folder.

Try starting upon some of the usual apps you have running, and then add a new file into the folder.

Each time that it works, try a new app and add a new file, and so on, until the new file gets deleted.