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MacOS bug on client - Moving online files causes files to move as 0 byte files but still deletes
Ran into this yesterday on MacOS M1 in Ventura. I had a file that was online only. It showed up in Finder as 0 bytes. If I made the file offline, then it would download the file and show the proper size also. BUT if I moved the file while it was online only, it would move the 0 byte file from the Dropbox folder and delete the file from Dropbox.
To sum up: I wanted to move a video file on my account from Dropbox and move it to a local folder since I was trying to copy a file from one PC to my Mac then to replace the file in the Dropbox account with a corrected one. But when I went to move the file from the Dropbox folder (with the online only file), it didn't download that file first before it moved it. So the only thing I got was that 0 byte pointer file and Dropbox still deleted it from my account.
Fortunately, I had 30 days recovery on my files and could get it back, but imagine if I moved a folder and had a handful of files in those folders as online only. They'd be gone and I probably wouldn't have noticed in that 30 day window.
That seems like a huge bug. Not sure if this is a Mac issue or a Dropbox one, but I'd hope that Dropbox could prevent the file from being moved without retrieving it first.
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- Nancy
Dropbox Community Moderator
Welcome back to the forum, alissa914.
What you mention sounds like an expected behavior; for example, if you just select a file and move it to another location on your device (outside of the local Dropbox folder), then the file will be transferred as it is at the moment it’s being moved, even if it’s online-only. Also, if the Dropbox app can no longer locate the file, this will be synced to our servers and the file will also be removed from your web account (it can still be restored though within 30 days, as you also mention).
If you want to move a file/folder outside of Dropbox, we generally recommend making it offline first and waiting till it’s fully downloaded on your computer, before moving it to another location.
I hope this clarifies things a bit. If you need something else, I’ll be around the Community!
If I have a 4GB file and it shows as 0 bytes in Finder because it's online only, if I move the file, it moves that 0 byte placeholder and you delete it. You need to download the file first and then move it out.
What it does now should not be desirable behavior at all. If I have 90% of a folder as offline and 10% online, then you're essentially saying that I should expect 10% of my files to be removed because you wouldn't queue them to download before you allowed them to be moved.
That really doesn't seem to make logical sense as to something anyone would want to happen.
You don't do this on Windows... and OneDrive on Mac does download them first.
If this is the official position of Dropbox, that's a bit depressing... I can't trust this service to not lose files for me anymore.... seriously. And to hear the excuse of "well, you should download them first" is just you avoiding fixing your bug. Really... really.... bad... Cancelling auto-renewal.
I just repeated this for Dropbox support and sent off a video. Basic way to replicate this is to copy the file, hit Option button to switch it to Move, drop it on a removable drive. File moves as 0 bytes. File doesn't download from that point. Moving file back to your local disk causes it to remain 0 bytes.
If you do it on the local disk, it moves as 0 but then something polls the system and downloads the file later after it's moved.
This shouldn't really move them until after it downloads the file, but whatever.... hope it gets fixed soon...
