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Conflicted copies that don't show up locally with Mac .rtfd files created with TextEdit.
I can create a .rtfd file with TextEdit by simply adding a graphic to a text file. TextEdit changes the extension to .rtfd. I have no trouble saving and opening these files in a DropBox folder in the...
I will start by confirming that I am experiencing this problem on:
Mac Studio
MacBook Air
MacMini
all of which are running macOS Sonoma.
Here is a full description with screenshots of each step:
(1) I created a sample RTFD file in TextEdit on the Mac and saved it to a DropBox subfolder. This is how the file is viewed in my Finder:
As you can see, the file is both visible in the Mac Finder and the Finder preview feature shows the contents of the file which consists of a small amount of text plus a graphic.
(2) I have a colleague who shares a DropBox folder with me that contains the directory shown above. At my request, he opened the RTFD file on his Mac and added some text in pink below the graphic. After he had done so, I asked him to copy the folder to another location at the same directory level in DropBox. Here are screenshots of both the original location and the location of the copied folder as show in my Mac Finder following his edits:
Both directories shown above appear to be empty in the Mac Finder. The first of these directories is the very same directory shown in Step 1 above.
(3) Next, I checked the DropBox menu item in the Finder to make sure that DropBox was fully synchronized. This screenshot confirms that it is:
(4) Next, I checked my DropBox account on the web. The following 2 screenshots show that both directories contain the RTFD file:
and
(5) To confirm that the edited RTFD file is in my DropBox account, I downloaded the file from the web. This is what I get in the Mac Finder in my Downloads folder:
(6) I proceeded to open the downloaded .tar file. The Mac then decompressed the .tar file thus providing an RTFD file that includes the edits from my colleague:
In other words, the edited file is intact.
Note that neither the .tar file nor the decompressed .rtfd file have the original file name.
(7) As a final step, I changed the name of the newly downloaded .rtfd file to the original name and copied it back to one of the original DropBox directories. After I did so, the Mac Finder showed the following, a renamed, conflicted file:
Clearly DropBox is renaming the file because there is already a file by that name in directory. However, the original file is not visible in the Finder. In the process of renaming the file, DropBox failed to put .rtfd at the end of the file name. Thus, the file appears as a folder rather than a file.
George
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorThanks for the very detailed update on this, PianoBench.
Can I ask you to check something? If you close the Dropbox app completely and try to reproduce the issue, does it persist?
I don't understand what you are asking. If I quit DropBox from it's persistent menu in my Mac menubar, a file that I create will obviously not be synchronized to DropBox.
- Hannah
I know what you mean, but the file that your colleague edits and adds to the folder, which theoretically syncs, but doesn't appear in the folder, what happens to that, if the Dropbox app is closed?
Is it still hidden?
I turned off DropBox. It made no difference. The file is still hidden.
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