All files moved to online only

So, I've been at gettin my dropbox sorted out again for the third time in a year because it wouldn't stop caching files for weeks on end. Two weeks ago, I blew dropbox away and reinstalled the whole thing. After an entire weekend of syncing and manually selecting all of the local folders on my computer to sync offline and online, I go and look at my files today and they are all online only again! Everything was downloaded and synced three days ago. The only thing I did was setup dropbox backup for my HD yesterday (which took another three hours). that worked fine until I realized today that my entire last weekend of getting my files downloaded from dropbox was wasted (again). Dropbox worked like a charm for the last 15 years, but the last year has been one of the worst software experiences I've ever had. I'm clearly doing something wrong. Anyone have a suggestion as to why DB would override my downloads and push it to online only? I can't waste any more time on this. None of my other online storage services are giving me this much issue.