Some of my files show up as zero bytes

Is the problem ever going to get fixed? I am just running in to it again where my git repo didn't replicated correctly. So now what do I do?

Hi idontgetoutmuch, what behavior are you experiencing? Have you checked that the files were successfully uploaded originally on the site, and checked the events page?

I have many files that show as 0 bytes but when I click "make available offline" then show the correct size and have the correct content. Fine if it's the odd file but I have thousands of such files.

I am trying to download the whole directory as a zip file and then unzip it. It's very big and taking its time.

So now I have all the files with the correct size but the modes are different - sigh

There are no other copies. These files were never deleted; they've lived here since they were created.

Thanks for the info, antoniojl, it seems that there isn't any other version of the file available on the Dropbox site, so it wouldn't be possible to recover them via Dropbox. 

idontgetoutmuch, what happens if you mark entire folders as available offline? Do the files download in bulk?

Hmmm... "so it wouldn't be possible to recover them via Dropbox" sounds a lot like "Dropbox has lost your files"

What I don't understand is that zeroed-out text files still show a preview in the web search view... indicating that there's metadata somewhere. Is there a way to access/download that?

Could you attach a screenshot showing what you're describing?

Sure. This file named 'Gone.txt' still shows up in Dropbox Web search as being 2.01kb and containing these words.

The version history only shows it being created, then moved:

Viewing the file in Dropbox Web shows a completely empty text file:

As does opening it from the (completely synced) Dropbox folder on my Mac:

But opening it up in a Hex editor shows just over 2kb of zeroes:

So either:
- I created this file like this intentionally, for some reason. But if so, why is Dropbox aware of some search metadata that was never in the file (remember there are no changes in the version history)?
Or
- Dropbox had the original file containing the text that we can see in the search metadata, then at some point there was an incident whilst syncing, and Dropbox lost the real data in the file, but still remembers the metadata. I presume Dropbox creates these all-zeroes placeholder files while syncing for the first time, to make sure there's room for the data it's going to fill them in with, as that data is downloaded. Maybe. because this file has never changed in size, there are no reported changes to Dropbox, hence nothing to re-sync/show in the version history. So then at some point, maybe Dropbox Mac has become confused, and believes the all-zeroes version to be the true file? But if so, then there would surely be a version history?

Hi Ive been having the same issue - thousands of files zero bytes - double clicking will load the file but I cannot preview with spacebar. Should I reinstall dropbbox? This is very worrisome 

Hey EE272, thanks for the nudge here.

Are you referring to using the spacebar to do a QuickLook preview? 

And are you able to do this with other files outside the Dropbox folder?

Jay that worked thanks - I don't think the permissions are right but this is good enough.