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Forum Discussion
How to identify what files are "online only" and change them to local?
I hope someone can help. I have never intentionally turned on Smart Sync. I always want all my files and documents to be local as well as in Dropbox. After adding a 3rd Mac, last month when I laun...
Rich
Super User II
Super User II
Edgemont wrote:
The alias of that folder is visible on my Desktop, as are certain other alias folders for other folders inside that main Dropbox folder.
Your aliases are outside of Dropbox, looking in. That's fine as Dropbox doesn't know they exist. Dropbox only knows about the actual folders inside your Dropbox folder. What isn't supported is when you have a folder located elsewhere on your computer and an alias inside the Dropbox folder looking out. In the past, Dropbox would sync the files at the other end of the alias, allowing you to sync folders and files that weren't located within the Dropbox folder. That behavior changed a couple years ago and is now no longer supported.
Thanks for that explanation Rich! That makes total sense. I never knew once upon a time DB could see an alias that the original wasn't inside its DB - that's wild.
Is there a way to identify and switch ALL online-only files and folders (without opening every single file everywhere)?
I don't normally use online-only, needed to last week for a limited period of time. Now I'd like to blanket-just turn everything back to "all synching all the time."
Help a brother out?
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi RogerCourville, thanks for posting today!
There's no way for you to avoid checking your folders for online-only files if you want to change their settings.
The best way would be for you to access the folder, select all the files, and change them to local.
If you have any other questions, let me know! It seems ludicrous that there isn't a way to display all of the online-only files. I have almost 200,000 files in thousands of folders stored on Dropbox. Approximately 20 folders set to online-only. However, if I want to find out which of my thousands of folders are online, I have to look at the contents of each folder? That is ridiculously impractical.
