Forum Discussion

Jamires's avatar
Jamires
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
Solved

I can see my folder online but not in File Explorer. App doesn't sync?

Hi,

 

All of my folders have synced to my PC except one. I am able to see in online and access it but it is not available via the app or on explorer despite being shared with me.

 

Thanks,

James

desktop
sync
windows
  • Sarg3ant's avatar
    Sarg3ant
    4 years ago

    Hi Jamires,

     

    Have you tried this?

     

    1. Click on the Dropbox icon in the bottom right corner on the windows toolbar.
    2. Click on your initials/profile pic
    3. Click "preferences"
    4. Click "Sync"
    5. Click "selective sync"

    Make sure all your files are ticked and click update and the should be then synced to your file explore in windows and not just online.

     

    Hope this helps 

34 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
Show More
  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    1 year ago

    Thanks for reaching out to us, davebenecounts.

     

    The screenshots you sent us are super helpful and I can immediately see the issue.

     

    The names of the folders in question have unsupported characters in them, which are the "." (period) and the "*" (asterisk).

     

    If you remove the periods and the asterisks from the folder names, they should sync to your Dropbox folder as normal.

     

    Check and let me know how it goes!

  • itahoki's avatar
    itahoki
    Helpful | Level 6
    9 months ago

    I’ve run into similar issues before where certain folders or files wouldn’t show up in the desktop app, even though they were visible online. One thing I found was that special characters like colons or periods at the end of file names can mess things up. Removing those characters fixed it for me every time.

    Also, I tried a tool called CloudMounter once, which helped me mount cloud storage as a local drive, but I’ve mainly stuck with fixing the syncing settings and making sure no invalid characters were involved. If the basic solutions don’t work, it might be worth double-checking for any hidden issues in the file names.

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!