The Dropbox app on my Mac is stuck syncing some files. What can I do?

Is the program thats using Studio Cellos open?

Dropbox doesn't sync files while they are open.

Also.... 

petermooreworld wrote:

repairing the hard links.  This increased the amount of files to over 8000.  A day later, nothing's changed, it's still at 4.6 GB, though, so it's still stuck.

Not sure what you meant on this. Do you mean you have symlinks etc. inside of Dropbox? If so they arent supported which could be the issue - Dropbox doesn't sync what isn't inside its own directory. 

Thanks, Mark.   
No, the program using Studio Cellos is not open. 
"Repairing the hardlinks" is a suggestion I found in the db community, sort of like fixing permissions:  (Select 'Preferences'/ 'Account'  Hold down the 'Option/Alt' key  Click on the 'Fix Hardlinks' button).  It didn't work, I just listed it to suggest other things I tried.    I don't think it's related to symlinks. 

petermooreworld wrote:

No, the program using Studio Cellos is not open. 

Bother!! I was, genuinely, banking on that one working. 

Ok, another suggestion - do you know where the file is (or what 'file' it is in as part of a Package)?

I had a similar issue once and the database just seemed messed up. I fixed it by dragging that file out of Dropbox, waiting for it all to 'kick in and sync' and then replacing it. Doing that fixed it all - did take a few hours of syncing as it was backed up with up/downloads however but worked perfectly after. 

I don't know where that file Studio Cello.caf is.   As I mentioned "I can't know for sure its location as a .caf is hidden within a .logic package, and it could be one of many .logic files I have on my dropbox.  And, I tried deleting one of these .logic folders in dropbox I suspected contains that file; but all that did was increase the amount of files it's syncing from  20 to 2307 and the size to 4.6 GB."   So I'm not inclined to remove the other dozen or so files (which are really packages of files) that may contain that problematic one.  Or rather, *I would*, if dropbox wouldn't then just add all their subfiles to its mountain of files to sync, which it seems to want to do.
I guess I was hoping someone had a way to just tell dropbox to stop trying to sync that one file.  But there isn't, is there?

Hey petermooreworld, sorry to see that you're having such an issue.

Is the app still stuck syncing this specific file?

Has the number of files syncing changed at all?

Hi Hannah.   Yup. it's still stuck at 'Syncing 8,528 files   4.6GB"   no change. 

Hi petermooreworld​, let me also jump in here! 

Could you try to restart the app using the steps that my colleague, Nancy​ provided here? 

One more thing I'd like to add to these steps is that if you see the Dropbox.app file file in both locations, delete the file in the second location(~/Library/Application Support/Dropbox).

If you see the file in the second location but not in the first, move the file to the first location(/Applications).

Provided that the issue isn’t resolved from there, try these steps:

- Open the Terminal application on your computer.
- Type fileproviderctl domain list.
- Press return on your keyboard.
- Please provide us with a screenshot of the output.
- Navigate to your user profile folder ~/Users/[YourUsername].
- Press command-shift-. (period). This will show your hidden files.
- Locate and delete the .dropbox folder in ~/Users/[YourUsername].

Thank you both for your suggestions.   

• I restarted the app per Nancy's steps.  But db still showed the same info once it restarted (although as of this morning it's grown to 8,569 files).
• There was no dropbox app in that second location(~/Library/Application Support/Dropbox).
• I tried the steps you outlined above.  Nothing changed, though, not sure if it was supposed to.
• Here is the screenshot of my terminal (probably only need the bottom half or so):

I should note that if I do right-click on a file on my MacBookPro's Finder and ask it to Sync Next it will jump that file to the head of the cue and sync it. (Altho I have only really tested this on smaller files). 
Thanks again, -- Peter

Thanks for the detailed update, Peter, we really appreciate it.

There's one more thing I'd like you to check; can you follow these steps to see if the Dropbox app has full disk access on the computer?

Gave Dropbox Full Disk Access (it already was toggled on in Accessibility, but I cycled it off-and-on anyway).   Nothing changed, though.