Files on Dropbox are still on my hard drive, why?

I see it in my menu bar now, when I downloaded it with your suggestion the message came back "your personal Dropbox is too large to fit on this computer."  Does that mean Dropbox is on my computer twice?  I don't know where to go from here.

Hi Suzanne W.4, interesting message. 

If you open your finder, are you able to see two Dropbox folders there, by any chance? 

Maybe one with the name Dropbox (old) and one simply named Dropbox? 

On my MacBook Pro there are two incidents of Dropbox, neither one says 'old'.  Both Dropbox folders have all my folders and files. 

These are the paths:  Finder--Suzanne's MacBook Pro--Macintosh HD--Applications--Dropbox.  All files and folders are there.

Finder-Applications--Dropbox.  All files and folders are there.

Are those two Dropbox folders one in the same, just different paths to find them?

Earlier this morning a pop up came from the Dropbox Icon on the menu. "Your storage is almost full".  I don't understand any of this.

A strange thing.  Before downloading another application of Dropbox yesterday my HD space was 70 GB.  Now it is 282 GB available of 500 GB.  This was my goal to free up hard drive space.

Hi again, Suzanne! The first instance you mention is the local folder the Dropbox app has created to sync your files. The second instance is the Dropbox app itself that’s been installed on your computer.

Now, it sounds indeed like you’re running out of hard drive space, which is why you received this error about your Dropbox being too large for your hard drive.

If you right click on a folder inside your local Dropbox folder now, are you seeing an option to make it online-only?

If you wil re read my last reply, you will see that there is now more storage space on my hard drive.  Also read about the two instances I found to Dropbox.  My question was about the two paths that lead to Dropbox on my Mac.  I asked if that there is only ONE Dropbox folder, but two paths leading to it.  Are those the same Dropbox folders, just two different ways to get there? 

Hey Suzanne W.4 - sorry to jump in here, but could you clarify if you're able to see any syncing icons on your files if you navigate to both of these paths on your computer? 

Yes.  And the blue 'sync' icon are identical in both places.  But what I don't understand is early yesterday my hard drive said I had 282 GB, but this morning it says 128 GB.  I haven't added anything that would equal that much of a drop in my hard drive space. 

There are still many files and folders to sync that I can see.  In the Dropbox folder there are green check marks and also cloud icons.  I assume the green check marks are ones that have synced, but what does the little cloud icon mean.  It is going to take a loooooong time to sync all the ones I see that have the blue sync icon, but those are not 'twirriling', like I've seen in the past. Does that mean syncing has stopped?

The folder locations you're referring to are just for the Dropbox app itself. It shouldn't be possible to have the Dropbox folder (where all your files are kept) in the same area. 

Could you confirm this by clicking the Dropbox icon in the menu bar, then the top right icon (it could be an image or your initials) and then Preferences. The Dropbox folder location will appear in the Sync tab. Could you let me know about this location?

The green icons means that the files have synced and are taking up space on your computer. Files with the cloud icon with a down arrow in them are online-only and don't take up any space. The blue icons shouldn't be spinning since they can't be animated, but it does mean that the Dropbox desktop application is in the process of syncing those files.

Have you marked files as online-only in order to free up space?

When I followed your directions and opened up preferences in the Dropbox icon on my menu bar it says files are stored 'suzannewalker'.  Let me know if I need to change this and 'how' to change it.  No, I haven't physically marked files as online only.  Can I do that with the files with the green check mark. 

Okay, so the files are stored in the normal folder it seems. 

You can right click any file or folder with a green icon and make it online-only to free up space on your computer.