Can't Drag Files to Dropbox Folder in Catalina

Worked for me, thanks! I CANNOT believe how long they are taking to get this fixed to be honest. It's clear that a lot of people are having this problem but they act like it's some sort of ad hoc occurrence.

I like the idea of a command-line fix. However, I'm reluctant to be one of the first users :grin:

I've seen one person like this. Anybody else? And has anybody else (that knows what they're doing) parse this command line awesomeness out & consider its safety?

Thank you all for your paticipation and posting details of your user cases. 

We appreciate the solution posted donawalt. Kudos for being helpful in our Community. I hope to see more users post that this worked for them. 

batsonjay you are on my radar now. Check the email address associated with your Community profile.

We will take it from there. 

Thank you all for working on this with us!

Cool. Mail received, and replied-to. Thanks.

Hi donawalt & everybody else,

Could be used simpler variant, covering more cases, without using python, but 'jq':

IFS=$'\n'; for i in `cat ~/.dropbox/info.json | jq -r '.[] | .root_path, .path'`; do if [ "$i" != "null" ]; then echo "$i"; xattr -d -r com.apple.quarantine "$i"; fi; done

Just another variant covering business subscription's "root_path", also. :wink:

@donawalt Thanks, I did try your code and got this error message: 

No such xattr: com.apple.quarantine

Any insights?

Hi Phillip D.4,

That mean you have no problem with the quarantine on the directory. Set also "-r" attribute. i.e. byself this "error" mean "no problem"! :wink:

I've found an easy workaround for now. If you create a sub-folder in Dropbox (call it something like Extra or Stuff or whatever), you can drag that sub-folder to the sidebar and it will accept files. That sub-folder is now in your root Dropbox folder. At some point, you can go into your Dropbox folder and organize or clean out the sub-folder. It's not as elegant but it's much easier than C/V or other copy/paste solutions.

I've just discovered this problem on my own system, and just found this thread. I'm astonished this problem was reported so long ago and still hasn't been fixed! Can that be right? Since I pay for Dropbox, it seems to me that either this should be resolved promptly or else I should take my business elsewhere.

Two questions, then:

1) Has Dropbox said when this problem will be fixed?

2) Which competitor of Dropbox is the most intuitive for longtime Dropbox users?

Same problem here and similarly surprised to find out (now i know i'm not the only one) that it's still not been addressed. It's muscle memory to drag files to Dropbox this way, and it's frustrating every time it doesn't work as expected.

I suspect it's actually an Apple issue and not a Dropbox one. Although if you look at my reply above yours, you can see I found a workaround.

Yeah Joe M.6 - i went with that for now. Good suggestion.

I appreciate the workaround but I fear I'll lose track of where I've placed files. If it's "an Apple issue and not a Dropbox one," then Dropbox should say so. Have they offered any official explanation?

Don, Thanks for sharing,  copied and pasted this into terminal, but I get an error message:  

command not found: python

Any ideas for me?  Jan

that worked for me, thanks. easy fix.

THanks @donawalt, this worked for me.

donawalt wrote:

I thought I would share this - I have been waiting for the permanent fix from Dropbox, which will BE this fix - it has not come out yet, so I thought I would share the fix that worked for me. I think this is all they are going to add into an update but I am not sure about that. Can you see if this works for you? You may have to restart your computer if it doesn't work, but I didn't have to.

Open Terminal, and enter this command (all one line):

IFS=$'\n'; for path in `python -c $'import os\nimport json\nfor key, value in json.loads(open(os.path.expanduser("~/.dropbox/info.json")).read()).items():\n print value["path"].encode("utf-8")'`; do echo "$path"; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$path"; done

 

Then try the drag and drop again!

---

This works! Thank you donawalt! 

This works, thank you donawalt 

Thanks donawalt  this solution worked for me as well on all machines.  Clearly its the resolution needed.  Was much easier to work with than the support.

Oh interesting! I am scared to use Terminal lol. How do you know this will be the Dropbox fix?

For what it's worth, I recently did a full refresh on my MBP and grabbed the latest version of dropbox as a result, and this issue has resolved itself for me. If nobody has tried it yet, make sure Catalina is up to date, and just reinstall dropbox to ensure you're at the latest vrsion.

donawalt i get this message...

zsh: command not found: xattr

Rob C.24 this is a bash shell command not zsh, which is the default. Many people prefer the old bash. Do this to change the default shell to Bash:

1. Open Terminal - see the title in the window? It says zsh right?

2. chsh -s /bin/bash 

3. It will ask for your password

4. Close Terminal window and reopen it - you should see "bash" in the title of the window now

5. Now enter this (all one line, just copy and paste it):

IFS=$'\n'; for path in `python -c $'import os\nimport json\nfor key, value in json.loads(open(os.path.expanduser("~/.dropbox/info.json")).read()).items():\n print value["path"].encode("utf-8")'`; do echo "$path"; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$path"; done

6. If you want to change it back to the default zsh after this is done, close the Terminal window, open a new Terminal window, and type chsh -s /bin/zsh. It will prompt again for your password, then close the Terminal window. Next time you will see zsh in the title!

Good luck!