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Fixed in this update:
My windows 11 laptop updated to 228.4.5567 this morning. Now it seems to be taking a really long time to index files. It seems to fluctuate between 40K & 50K files (out of around 400,000). It's keeping recent changes from syncing. I've paused sync & restarted sync. Shut down & rebooted the computer. I'm going to let it run all night, but it's causing a back log and others cannot see my recent changes. Anyone else experience issues with this build?
I've had this exact same experience...version updated this morning and has been indexing all day. Have not had this issue with previous updates.
Thanks for notifying us of this, I'll pass the experience along to the team
Can't major version updates be scheduled for weekends? What if something goes wrong during workdays?
My team is also experiencing this issue where it's taking near all day and continually syncing. It's been happening since this morning.
Left my laptop on overnight with the hope that it would finish indexing everything. However I woke up to the same cycling of it bouncing between the number of files and time remaining for it to index everything. Any updates on how to resolve this issue as soon as possible would be much appreciated.
I am still struggling with this as well. Finally resorted to an uninstall/re-install which is not going all that well thus far (am having lots of selective sync errors). At this point am going into damage control mode to make sure no data is lost. What say you, Dropbox?
I let it run all night. It took exactly 24 hours to finish syncing.
I did notice that dropbox uses the term sync and index interchangeably and in my world they are two different things. If you hover your mouse over the taskbar icon it says "indexing" but if you click on the icon the pop up window says "syncing", that was part of my confusion. I thought all of the files had sync'd and it was now indexing the files and so I was concerned that changes hadn't updated across the drive yet.
It would also be nice if we were allowed to schedule the updates (and perhaps with a reminder that this could take a long time.)
I imagine this affects people who have their files stored locally(?)
Hi everyone,
Thank you for reporting this feedback to us.
We are currently looking into these issues and once we have more information, I'll update this thread.
Same problem here, the wole team got all the files indexing again, so th recent files doesnt appear online or vice versa.
Hi all, thanks for sharing your observations!
What you’re experiencing may not actually be a bug. This is an expected behavior during Dropbox’s indexing process. After certain types of actions (like migration, reinstalling, renaming large folders, or applying a new build), Dropbox can reindex files to ensure everything is correctly cataloged and in sync across devices.
This reindexing can take longer than expected, especially if there are a lot of files or changes involved. While it might look like something is stuck, it’s usually just Dropbox working through that background process.
Your files remain fully available and usable during indexing. Nothing is lost or blocked. Dropbox continues to operate as normal while it rebuilds its internal index.
If you continue to see unusually prolonged indexing with no progress after a reasonable amount of time, feel free to reach out with logs so we can take a closer look. But in most cases, just letting it finish without interruption is the best course.
Appreciate everyone flagging their experiences. It helps others know what to expect!
My experience is similar to the other users. After a couple of days I still do not have stable Dropbox installations on my two laptops. On one, the files will not sync. On the other, the process of adding a small folder to be available offline causes the entire file structure to be re-downloaded and re-indexed. It is clear that this update is not ready for release. It should be paused.
If updating and re-indexing all your files now means:
*displaying contradictory/nonsensical sync icons which make sync status unclear;
*downloading all your online-only content to your hard drive, eating up all the space;
*still not being anywhere near finished indexing/downloading/syncing, so the app must be paused and the computer shut down as unusable in the meantime;
*and creating a bunch of conflicted sync folders after being told to unlink and relink--then starting the indexing/downloading/syncing process all over again
...is "expected behavior" and not a bug, I genuinely wish I'd been given the choice to opt out before this update messed up my computer.
I am in a location with limited (expensive) internet access this week, and the many hours of re-syncing and re-indexing tens of thousands of items (when only a handful of files have actually changed) is stopping me from doing any work on the laptop at the moment - fans are going full bore and the reindexing remaining figure seems to increase on a regular basis. It would've been good if this update could've been scheduled for manual install at a less critical time. Look forward to hearing what can be done to resolve. Many thanks.
Similar issue. - still indexing 24 hrs later with no. of files pending fluctuating wildly. - not prioritising newly added files for upload so unable to share a link with others hours after it was added which is really the core reason for using dropbox.
Hey Michael, it ended up taking me somewhere between 2-3 days in total to completely index again. It's extremely frustrating to experience but just know it should resolve itself as long as you leave your computer on and let it sync for the extended period of time.
For everyone to see. I spent a week trying to figure out my issue with multiple chats and reinstalls and everything just to find out none of that was even the issue and somehow no-one I spoke to realized that the actual solution to my problem was enabling File Provider on my account to work with my Mac. Dropbox Icon in top right > Profile Image > Preferences > Sync > Dropbox Folder Updates, click Learn More. Then fallow the instructions on the help page that pops up.Fixed all my issues within minutes.
Thanks for letting us know @PKIEF.
I completely understand the frustration around this but I appreciate you sharing that with the community and I'm glad everything has finished indexing.
Our team is aware of this issue internally so any and all feedback is welcome.
I hope a solution is still being looked into for Windows users. I still have no resolution to my ticket.
I also don't believe that just letting it continue indexing/syncing is possible for me, as I have a mere 15GB left on my hard drive (due to it downloading all my online-only content) and it was nowhere near done.
And all the conflicted folders now, too.
some companies may do it differently, but I've generally been taught to push out releases earlier during the work week so you can resolve any issues that come up. A Friday or weekend release can be more difficult to patch because people are out of the office, or you have buggy fixes from a skeleton crew that isn't performing at 100%.
this release has compatibility issues with Boxcryptor Classic. There is a post in integrations titled: "Dropbox's latest update leads to no access to Boxcryptor files. Can't copy or open them."Is there a fix for this?
I have managed to revert to the previous build. But the instructions are not very good. I have tried to explain the whole process here. This is based on a series of chats with Dropbox Support.
You can opt out of the new version of Dropbox with these steps https://help.dropbox.com/installs/dropbox-for-windows
What isn't stated in the above link is the process of logging in and out. It's more than just quitting Dropbox. You will need to log out of Dropbox and then log back in with these steps here https://help.dropbox.com/account-access/sign-in-out#logoutdesktop
Furthermore, to recreate Dropbox folders you have to delete the old Dropbox folder once you are sure that Dropbox isn't running. Otherwise you end up with incorrectly named folders etc. Before you delete any folders, double check that Dropbox isn't running!
The version number is still 228.4.5567 but there must be an internal switch that disables cloud files.
The new install of (non-cloud-files) Dropbox will download all your folders afresh. Now here's the interesting bit. On the non-cloud version, it takes about a tenth of the time to completely recreate your local Dropbox folders compared to using the cloud files version. I managed to recreate all my folders in 3 hours compared with over a day with the cloud files version. Yes, the old version is ten times faster!
It completely baffles me that Dropbox is prepared to push an upgrade that reduces sync performance by a factor of ten. Dropbox admits that "Dropbox is actively working to preserve the reliability and quality of our sync experience along with these changes" which rather implies to me that they know that the reliability and quality of the sync experience is lacking.
Hi @buddyguy,
Just for some context as to why this might have happened, we don't provide customer support for another product (i.e. Boxcryptor Classic) which is not from Dropbox.
Since the company that developed this software officially stated that they also don't offer support for Boxcryptor Classic anymore (because it reached its end-of-life), we can only help customers that struggle with .bc files to troubleshoot and find a workaround from the Dropbox side.
We noticed the same issue — synchronization takes an extremely long time. In addition, data is being made available offline without the command, which, in the case of multiple users, has now led to the hard drive becoming full and the sync being unable to continue.
Hi @KLRT_KRAG,
Thanks for letting us know and I'm sorry to hear about that! I've asked internally about why your data would be made available offline spontaneously.
As soon as I have an answer, I'll let you know immediately.
Neal, I too found that the upgrade didn't always respect the online/offline situation beforehand. Dropbox seemed to be downloading files but the folders were marked as online only in my case. It's quite laborious to go through and change the status of folders isn't it. This is part of the reason I went back to the previous version.
I too have noticed that the new symbols indicating online only are not accurate. I have folders that have been selected to have files stored locally, but the symbol indicates online only. But when going thru the folder and subfolders it appears that in fact the files are stored locally as desired. Makes it really hard to know if the files are really local or are online only. This "Stable Build" seems to be anything but stable.
Hi @Neal
We are experiencing the same issue with two other clients. We deployed the Dropbox Enterprise Installer, which means updates are handled automatically by Dropbox. Users with the latest version are experiencing the problem.
We were able to verify via the firewall logs when the downloads started — completely random times. This has now happened to 3 users in the past 2 days. Additionally, some users no longer see the sync icons in Windows, which is also causing confusion.
My question:
Should we revert to the older stable version and deploy the Enterprise Installer there? If so, how does the downgrade behave? Or would it be better to deploy a beta version?
And do you recommend the Enterprise Installer or the regular Dropbox client for businesses? What are the differences in terms of update intervals? We want to avoid such issues in the future...
Hi @jeremyklein & @MarkDrye,
Thanks for letting is know! Our team is aware of this issue already and it is being investigated as we speak.
I'll hopefully have some news to share soon but thank you again in the meantime for sharing your feedback, the more reports we have, the easier it will be to solve the issue.
Any idea what the average wait time is for files to finish syncing in this update...? I saw some posts mentioning 1-2 days. I'm near the 36hr mark and there's no way to tell how far through the process it is, it just tells the total number of files and gigabytes it has to sync, the numbers don't change. My laptop is 5yrs old with a swollen battery and the weather's been quite hot, I'm not sure how well it's handling this.
And for some reason my help ticket was marked as solved before I could attempt this and my issue isn't entirely resolved yet.
