conflicting copies and deleted files still appearing

We are actually having this issue as well. It varies with Excel and adobe products whether is be photoshop or indesign. The users don't even have to be logged on or working on the folder and conflicting copies will appear. They are all working in seperate folders, all windows 10, and it seems to happen when the machines are syncing when the users first log in for the morning.

We have our machines set to never turn off, never sleep, and users may log out at best.

Hopefully support has some more information why this is happening. Apparently the users here just dealt with it until it got worse over time.

Hey csharon, 

Welcome to the Dropbox Community, thanks for reaching out here about this issue.  

Thanks csharon

The point "it seems to happen when the machines are syncing when the users first log in for the morning" may be significant. I have tried cancelling the Dropbox process on startup and then manually starting the process after about an hour after login. This seems to give far fewer conflicted files - sometimes none at all. 

I also notice that large files seem more likely to be marked as conflicted than smaller ones.

One hypothesis for the observed effect is that there is some other process (Windows Indexer?) that runs on log-in and is *reading* the files. When the Dropbox scanner comes to the file it finds that it is open and so assumes that it is being *modified* - and so marks the local copy as conflicted (since it was opened before the synchronisation has taken place). When the other process closes the file unmodified Dropbox has already put it on the conflicted list.

This hypothesis would also explain why:

• the effect only seems to be observed with "indexable" files
• the effect seems to happen mainly with large files (because they will be open for indexing longer than smaller files)
• the 'conflicted' version of the file is identical (tested by using Dropbox's version restore facility and then a binary diff) to the previous correct version on the source machine, although the modification time has changed.

It may be that Dropbox needs a better approach to handling files that it finds open while seeking to synchronise?

Jane Thanks. I have reopened the trouble ticket as the response did not really address the issue. csharon's post and my further comment online might help pin down what is happening.

Hey andrew_s, 

Thanks for keeping me updated! 

Got you on that, I 've made sure to prioritize your request, since we've been troubleshooting together for some time. I can see this has been sent over to our team specialists for further review and you will hear back from them on your open support request soon. 

Hope this is helpful for you, again I truly appreciate your ongoing patience and cooperation on the matter. 

Support basically had me check anti viruses, paths, and other common causes. Which were not the case. We also did not leave programs running or have connection issues. I'm building them a list of the files that are having the issues which are sporadic at best. Usually this is just a runaround though and has not solved the root issue.

+1 to the andrew_s and possible indexing issues