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kjmed's avatar
kjmed
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago

accessing online-only files from macos terminal

I have a large, shared dropbox folder that is set to "online-only", but I want to make specific files available offline. I know I can do this via right clicks in the Finder window for individual file...
desktop
Folders
sync
Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago

It doesn't matter what file you open, and which program you use, the Dropbox desktop application should detect that the file is being requested and download it for it to be viewed. You can see this with txt files, PDFs, images, and videos, so it isn't restricted to Office files. 

 

Could you clarify how you're opening the file in these programs? Is it only via the command line, or are you using a GUI to open it, or by double clicking the file in Finder?

kjmed's avatar
kjmed
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago

Double-clicking in Finder works fine. Using a standard file IO function like "fopen" in Matlab, or the "grep" command in terminal, does not work. If my GUI app uses a file dialog to let the user identify a file, and then use an IO function to access that filename, it does not work. General purpose IO streams return zero bytes of data.

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hi from me as well, kjmed. 

     

    I believe what you describe is expected, as explained here. 

     

    Hope this helps a bit.

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