I made a folder online-only, but if I delete it from my computer, it gets removed from Dropbox.

Hey lloyddwright, thanks for your post. 

Making a folder online-only on your Dropbox app should be enough so that it doesn’t take up hard drive space from your computer (what’s left after making it online-only is its placeholder and the original folder can be found on www.dropbox.com). 

If you delete a file/folder from your desktop app instead, it’s expected that this action will also sync to your web account and the files will be removed from there, as well.

Can you please check how much actual space the folder is taking now on your computer and send me a screenshot of what you see? 

Keep me posted.

lloyddwright wrote:

My laptop storage is almost depleted. I have marked a folder (using File Explorer) as Online Only

Dropbox has a hidden cache. It takes time for that to empty - usually a few days. 

Have a look at this article to see how to empty it which should clear some space for you :)

I have set the PHOTOS folder as Online Only. The screenshot shows it is still taking 40gb

Thanks for the screenshot! While 40.3GB seems to be the folder’s original size indeed, it should be taking up 176KB of actual hard drive space on your device after making it online-only; so the feature seems to be working. 

Have you made any other folders online-only and there’s no difference between their original size and the actual size they take up on your hard drive?

Hi lloyddwright and welcome back to the Dropbox Community. I am glad to see your query has been resolved thanks to Nancy's help. 

By the way, my name is Theresa, and you might see me popping up around the Community 👩‍💻. I absolutely love hearing from our members and learning how they use Dropbox in their daily lives 💙.

If you're open to sharing, I’d love to hear how you use Dropbox 💡. Who knows, you might inspire some helpful tips we can share with others or even spark ideas to pass along to our internal team! 🤗

T 😺 (Dropbox Community Manager)