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It takes a long time for my files to become available offline, or the syncing fails completely.
Generally, I keep my Dropbox files off-line. In the past, if I marked a particular file "make available offline", the circle next to the file name would turn green fairly quickly, and the file would then be available on my driv drive immideately. Now, however, the "make available offline option seems to have no effect. If I try to access a file, the access is veery slow and sometimes fail completely. However, I can usually still access files if I wait long enough. Also, I can move files (very slowly) to a flash drive. why has this change occurred?
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Dropbox files are stored on an external Samsung SSD which has 2.6 TB available out of 4 TB.
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey cfrivera1, let me also jump in here!
Does this happen with newly added files, or existing files?
I'm asking because this setting allows files to remain available-offline by default if they are added on the web or via another device.
If you select your content inside your Dropbox folder, right click on it, and choose to sync it as available offline, does that work?
Yes, this issue occurs with any newly added files. I’ve tested it with multiple files shared/added to Dropbox from my iPhone—including email attachments and photos received via text—and while they appear in the Dropbox folder on my Mac, they show as taking "Zero bytes" locally. To access the actual content, I have to manually double-click each file to download it.
"Dropbox 222.4.5042 Up to date" - Upon installing this version of Dropbox, I immediately noticed an issue with file synchronization. Many files—far more than expected—were showing as taking "Zero bytes" of local disk space. Notably, my local Dropbox folder was only occupying about half the expected disk space, suggesting incomplete offline storage. Dozens of files appeared in the local folder but remained online-only (indicated by "Zero bytes" locally). Opening these files took longer than usual, likely due to on-demand downloading. All files should be fully downloaded and available offline by default (Based on my Preferences selection), yet newly synced files remain online-only unless manually downloaded each time.
- Nancy
Thanks for the updates so far! One more thing I’d like to ask you on this; do the files you make available offline remain as such, after you’ve changed their status, or do they automatically become online-only again at some point?
This will help us isolate the issue a bit more.
