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Removing files from Mac but not Dropbox
I have a MacBook Air, and as such it's got 121Gb of memory. I synced it with the company DropBox account, and so the Mac claims to have 1.4TB of documents (all the company documents) on it. Obvio...
Hey RaiyuLovesToast, before you delete the files, please make sure that you've unlinked the computer from your account.
You can do so, by clicking on the trash can next to the name of the computer in question from the 'Devices' section in your account settings here.
And as for you, MikeDodson, generally, as long as a computer is no longer linked to a Dropbox account, you can safely delete the Dropbox files from your computer, without affecting your account online.
Just make sure you're not deleting files that are available only in your hard drive and not the Dropbox website, because you will lose those and won't be able to restore through Dropbox.
Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorJust to check, are they now showing the correct filesizes, if they are online-only, which should be zero-bytes?
That's the weird thing - like I say, the Mac only has 121GB of memory, but it's showing Documents as taking up 1.4TB of space.
The reason for all of this is that Photoshop keeps telling me the scratch disks are full, when they aren't (I don't have much on my hard drive at all).
- Nancy
Hi Mike, and sorry for jumping in.
Do you mind uploading a screenshot of the size of your Documents folder, as showing on your Finder?
Also, can you please let me know what steps you followed exactly, in order to remove Dropbox from your computer? Do you still see the small Dropbox icon in your menu bar?
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for stepping in - attached (hopefully) is a screenshot.
I was advised to unlink the computer from dropbox and that it would give me an "Unlink anyway" option, though it didn't. I then deleted Dropbox from my apps, and Dropbox is no longer available to me on my Mac. I have contacted Mac support and they have said it is a Dropbox issue - they can't comment or advise.
- Nancy
Thanks for the screenshot, Mike; I appreciate it.
The “unlink” option is what you’d need indeed, so that you can safely delete the local Dropbox files without affecting your web account.
What you can do as an extra test in this case, to make sure these files are no longer synced to your web account, is to upload a small file within the Documents folder, and then check www.dropbox.com.
Do you see this file there, after it's been added to this folder?
