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Dieselista's avatar
Dieselista
Explorer | Level 3
6 months ago
Solved

New Dropbox files sync as online-only on Windows, even though I want them to be available offline.

I am a long-time user of DropBox, having been a very early adopter.  I have used the program successfully across several computers, phones and tablets, pretty much without issues.  However, I recentl...
desktop
sync
windows
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    6 months ago

    Hi Dieselista, just for clarification, did you also right click the Dropbox folder itself and mark it as available offline, in order for all files to get the green check marks?

Dieselista's avatar
Dieselista
Explorer | Level 3
6 months ago

 Right before they all populate?   They are thumbnails with clouds.  See attached.  Right now, I just opened this folder, it's one I haven't opened on this computer until now, and the files in it are all showing clouds, as you can see.  In order to get these to go to check marks I need to actually open each one.  So in this case, opening the folder wasn't enough to get them to download to this computer.  This isn't new, this has also happened before.

Synching status, right at this moment it is synching because I created a folder on this laptop in flight and it is now uploading those, however, as I was writing this it switched to up to date, even though there are folders with cloud icon files.

App version is 227.4.4774

Nancy's avatar
Nancy
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
6 months ago

Thanks for that! The cloud syncing icons you see next to your files (in your screenshot) mean that they're online-only indeed, like Mark and Hannah suggested above.

To make these available offline, you need to open them indeed, so that the app can start syncing/downloading them locally to your device.

However, if you’ve selected new files to be available offline in your desktop app settings, then it's true that their default status shouldn’t be online-only on your desktop app. 

Can you reinstall the Dropbox app in the meantime and select new files to be available offline once more? I’d like to see if this will fix the issue.

  • Dieselista's avatar
    Dieselista
    Explorer | Level 3
    6 months ago

    "However, if you’ve selected new files to be available offline in your desktop app settings, then it's true that their default status shouldn’t be online-only on your desktop app. "

    Exactly my issue!

    I'll try reinstalling the app, however, I won't do that until I'm back at my office, I can't take a chance that I won't have access to any of these folders while traveling.

    • Nancy's avatar
      Nancy
      Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
      6 months ago

      Not an issue at all! You can test this whenever you can, and get back to us then.

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