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WilliamLow's avatar
WilliamLow
Helpful | Level 5
8 years ago
Solved

Selective Sync Conflict mess!

Hello,  I just did a fresh OS install on my Mac, with my Dropbox folder on an external drive (my startup disk is too small to hold this data). I thought that I setup my Dropbox correctly, pointing t...
desktop
sync
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    8 years ago
    Hi William, unfortunately there’s no way of merging the folders into one using Dropbox, since there isn’t a way of knowing which folder/file has the most up-to-date information in it, or instead older files that do have important data.
     
    This can only be checked manually by yourself since only you know which files need to be kept or discarded.
     
    The reason for these extra folders is that previous you had folders which were selectively ‘unsynced’ already according to the desktop app. This should delete the local copy of the folders on that drive.
     
    However, it seems that the folders were either recreated by some app, or the folders weren’t deleted in the first place. They would’ve had a gray minus symbol showing that they weren’t syncing to the site.
     
    When connecting the Dropbox account to the external drive after the reinstall, either these folders were then allowed to sync to the drive (i.e. all folders had a check next to them), and then this would create the selective sync conflicts. 
     
    This is done avoid data loss, since as I mentioned, only you know which files should remain or not.
     
     
    Hope this helps to clarify matters!
     
johnchubb's avatar
johnchubb
New member | Level 2
7 years ago

I think this answer is a total fail to understand the impact to the customer.  If you don't want to use diff tools to verify all the files are the same, at least prompt the user to select which files to keep and stop cloning directories.  It's gotten so bad, I have conflict folders of conflict folders.  My use case is 2 computers with dropbox folders causing nightmares.  Why would we know that selective sync actually meant DropBox was deleting the folders locally?  I will be looking for an alternative provider if this continues to be unresolved.

Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
7 years ago
Hi John, the selective sync article mentions that when a folder is deselected, it will no longer appear on the machine.
 
I’ll forward your feedback to our dev team for their consideration to improve the message prompts when using selective sync.

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