Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox đŸ‘šâ€đŸ’»? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

xmarc999's avatar
xmarc999
Helpful | Level 5
8 months ago

Setting folders to Online-Only has left countless orphaned files on Mac OS

I have a folder in Dropbox called  "~ ~ 0 DropBox Only." For ease of reference, I'm just going to call it "Dropbox Only."  It contains many many folders that I intended to make online-only, having st...
desktop
Mac
sync
xmarc999's avatar
xmarc999
Helpful | Level 5
8 months ago

Second example and the more common occurrence:

Here we see a pdf (p502 copy.pdf) in a folder. From the Finder window, all looks normal, although the cloud icon has an exclamation. The second frame shows the error "Couldn't communicate with a helper application." On an "orphan" file, I get this error regardless of what the cloud icon shows.

In all cases, if I log into Dropbox and navigate to the corresponding DB file, it works normally.

Within a given folder, files within some subfolders work just fine, while other files get these errors. 

I'm very cautious about these files. I was tempted to just delete them and then download the corresponding DB file, but I get the message: "Delete [filename]
from your Dropbox account and all devices?"

For reading an orphaned file, I just download the DB file into a scratch folder and get the information I want. Updating an orphaned file usually requires creating a new folder and keeping the new copy in that.

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    8 months ago

    Hey xmarc999 let me jump in here!

    I wonder if you get the same error if you manually try to change the files from online-only to available offline.

    You should be able to right click on a file/folder, and change its status that way.

    • xmarc999's avatar
      xmarc999
      Helpful | Level 5
      8 months ago

      Megan, thanks for the thought. 

      Unfortunately, that just results in the "Couldn't communicate with a helper application.
      Try your operation again. If that fails, quit and relaunch the application and try again" error message.

      If I try to move the file to the Trash, I get 

      "Delete [filename] from your Dropbox account and all devices?
      If you just want to save hard drive space on this computer, cancel and make it
      online-only."

      Now I'm curious. I tried each of the right-click options.

      Copy Dropbox link - nothing

      Share... - nothing

      Transfer a copy... – opens the Transfer dialog. I can type in an email address. When I click “Send,” I get “Couldn’t complete your transfer.”

      Make available offline – “Couldn’t communicate with a helper application.”

      View on Dropbox.com - nothing

      Sync next – Opens the Transfer dialog. ?!?!?!?! Try it again. Nothing.

      Version history - Opens the Transfer dialog. ?!?!?!?! Try it again. Nothing.

      Get signatures – nothing

      Sign yourself - nothing

      Manage file access - nothing

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!