I can confirm that I'm seeing the same behavior that cabreu described: ignored folders don't get synced BUT the dropbox app continues to monitor them anyway and performs some level of processing whenever files are added/removed/edited from inside ignored folders 😩 Unfortunately this all but defeats the purpose of an "ignore" feature for many of us. We need dropbox to truly ignore (i.e. do not react to changes within) certain folders to preserve system resources.

Thanks for responding! But no, I'm not talking about the syncing responsible for removing the folder from other devices. Here are the steps I took...Created a new, empty folder named "foobar".Marked it as ignored and waited for the Dropbox app to finish syncing.Confirmed that the icon was changed to a gray minus sign and that the folder isn't on other devices.Added a new file named "foo.txt" to the ignored folder.At this point, I see the Dropbox icon start spinning and it says it is "Syncing foo.txt..."I then confirmed that the file's icon was a gray minus sign and the file wasn't added to other devices.Edited the foo.txt file.Again, I saw the icon start spinning and Dropbox said it was syncing a file.Again, confirmed that the file wasn't added to other devices.Removed the foo.txt file.Again, I saw the icon start spinning and Dropbox said it was syncing a file.So the new feature is properly preventing ignored files/folders from being synced to other devices... but the Dropbox app still reacts to the fact that something changed inside the ignored folder. I can't tell for sure obviously, but it looks like it processes the file that was changed and then decides not to sync it to other devices — instead of actually ignoring any changes within the ignored folder altogether.So this feature seems to be more of a "do not sync this folder to other devices" feature instead of an "ignore this folder" feature.And unfortunately, it looks like that won't solve the scenario that many of us have been requesting this feature for. I'm a software developer and there are often folders that have thousands of files in them that get updated very frequently while I'm developing. When Dropbox tries to process all of those changes it eats up a ton of my computer's resources. So what I need is to be able to tell Dropbox to completely ignore a folder by not monitoring/processing any changes that happen to the files inside of it.

Guys youve known about this for six months, this problem is still up, we need a fix, its a useability breaking problem, and im on windows using a business license with 100 users, not linux. Before you guys decided to make mandatory that dropbox cannot selective sync and ignore a folder i could just selective sync it away, create it and all would be well, but you removed that and now im forced to hack/modify stuff to try to get my work done. You added the ignore function and i said ok they broke something but they added a workaround, not ideal but ok, however it still checks for any files inside the folder for changes.. every..single...time... , and takes the same amount of time as if i had synced them, might as well just let it do it. It doesnt TRULLY ignore the folder, and its a folder that continuously handles hundreds of thousands of files, our github repository log file folder contains 756,000+ files... i do not need to dropbox those files, nor to "index" them... thanks to you I can no longer selective sync it away, because i need to be able to see those logs, and i cannot remove the folder from dropbox because others need it synced in real time , every time our database decides to create dump logs or compile logs, my dropbox becomes unusable, i have to CTRL-ALT-DEL hard close it, and restart it, sometimes it ignores the files, other times it does not and i need to reset my machine I set this folder on ignore specifically for this purpose. Also, while the program is running, even tho the databases EXE file is clearly marked as ignore, dropbox tries to sync it, and says "unable to sync XXXX.EXE, file is in use", hanging all my other sync queue files until i close the database, this is just ridiculous. Please fix this, its not that complicated. If folder/file has ignore file then dont sync AND do not include this file/folder in the indexing database, its not rocket science.

Thanks for keeping in touch here rjclardy; it’s Jane this time! I’ve sent you a brief message through our support system following-up from your discussion with Fiona here. Please have a look at your inbox when you have some spare time & we’ll take it from there to see if what you’re experiencing is expected in any way &/or if there’a a way to improve that. I look forward to hearing back from you!

I'm having this exact issue. Dropbox still tries to interrogate ignored files before deciding not to do anything with them. If I've marked a folder to be ignored, I would expect no Dropbox activity to take place in that folder or its subfolders. This is causing a major headache as alot of temporary files are written to this location and Dropbox is interfering/monitoring these files despite being flagged as ignore. For clarity it pertains to folders which have been flagged as ignored via folder attributes. e.g. via powershell Set-Content -Path 'Full\Path\Here' -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1 This is as per https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignored-files

I have the same problem too, in Ubuntu 18.04, v87.4.138.In the previous version, this feature worked perfectly.Any solution?

The ignore folder feature is not working.

28 Replies

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Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
4 years ago
Thank you for your speedy reply, teadrinker!

Would it be okay for me to reach out via email in order for us to have a look?
teadrinker
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
Sure! there is a ticket already: 15924600
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
4 years ago
Thank you for the ticket number reference, teadrinker!

I can see that your case has been sent to our Specialized agents in order for them to investigate.

Hold tight, and they should reply back to you soon, letting you know more about the next steps you'd need to take.

If you need anything else, don't hesitate to let me know.
darius00klokj
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
Not sure if you still have this issue, but for those using Dropbox and Git repos, you can init outside of the project folder using:
git init --separate-git-dir /outside/of/dropbox/mygit-project.git
Hope it helps
aplowman
Explorer | Level 4
4 years ago
What worked for me was adding an asterisk after the directory name:

Set-Content -Path Library\* -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1
jamievicary
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago
I still have this issue. Is there an update? Looks like this has been a problem for years now.
Dragorion
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago
teadrinker wrote:
I'm having an issue on windows 10, files can be ignored, but not folders.
I tried running as admin, both relative and full paths, and with and without trailing backslash
For folders, I always get this error:

Set-Content : Could not open the alternate data stream 'com.dropbox.ignored'

+ Set-Content -Path Library -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-Content], FileNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.IO.FileNotFoundException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SetContentCommand
I had this issue for folders with the 'R' attribute (which they have, for example, when they were configured to show a custom icon).
The solution is to 1. unset 'R', 2. ignore directory, and 3. reset 'R'.

I created a .bat file for execution in such folders that I want to be ignored by Dropbox:
attrib -r "%cd%" powershell -command "Set-Content -Path \"%cd%\" -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1" attrib +r "%cd%" pause
And to unignore:
attrib -r "%cd%" powershell -command "Clear-Content -Path \"%cd%\" -Stream com.dropbox.ignored" attrib +r "%cd%" pause
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago
Hey jamievicary, I hope you're doing well!

Just to make sure we're on the same page here: are these the steps you follow on your end when trying to ignore a file/folder?

Do you have any problems or come across any errors when trying them out?

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there!

Forum Discussion

The ignore folder feature is not working.

28 Replies

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