Stop Selective Sync from automatically adding new files/folders added on the web client

Thanks - very concise (and in hindsight, obvious!) solution. Much appreciated!

This happens even with folders added by other useers to a teams dropbox; so instead of only seeing my job, it keeps putting additional folders with other projects into my selective sync. This seems to not be limited to the web interface as it occurs following changes from the desktop apps too.

I remove these folders from the sync manually each time, however with just my team thats 8x manual removal every two-three days.

Is this really how 'Selective Sync' is meant to work? That isnt very selective. Should the functionality be that, at most, it adds new folders and files I create outside of the already syncing items?

Hi p aplin vft, if an entire folder is unticked in the selective sync window, this would prevent any file or subfolder in that folder to sync to the machine. 

Are the files you're getting from other users in a folder that has no checkmark at all in the selective sync window?

Hi @ Jay,

The folders I am getting are part of the tree where only one folder is selected.

I often get VFT241 (as an example) added into my  selective sync, or if a new project subfolder is added. These are items I have chosen not to sync. In fact anything below the VFT237 folder can seemingly randomly be added, even in the root directory.

I accept everything new in VFT237 should be added (tick indicates the whole folder), but can not stop the others from being added.

As you can see by some of the sizes, this creates major issues on field tablets that already restricted (ie. only one or two folders in the Project) when space is not endless.

Hope that clarifies for you. Thanks for the help

Sorry to jump in here, p aplin vft, but can you also send us a screenshot of how your Dropbox folder appears, for comparison reasons?

Thanks for the example. In the selective sync window, anything without a checkmark will not be synced to your machine, and neither will any subfolders.

The minus symbol, like on the parent of VFT 237, means that at least one folder is marked to be selected. However, this doesn't prevent the creation of new subfolders in that parent folder, which is why you need to keep deselecting them if you don't want them to sync.

I hope this info helps to clarify matters.

Hi Jay ,

It describes what is happening yes.

However, why does a new folder created in a directory marked with a 'minus' get added to my selective sync?

I have not told selective sync to add that folder, nor am I telling the directory to sync everything.

This is the bug that I am trying to resolve. The behaviour for selective sync, IMO,  SHOULD be to sync what is requested, not to add information that is outside the 'Ticked" folders.

Am i correct in understanding I have no control over this?

Hey p aplin vft, sorry to jump in and thank you for your feedback on this. 

I just wanted to mention that team admins can set new folders to not sync automatically via the team selective sync feature, however it can only be applied on the top-level folders and their first subfolder.

What you can do in such cases, is when you see a big sync happening, pause syncing as soon as possible and uncheck the new folder from the app's preferences, through the Sync tab. 

 I hope this helps a tad.