My desktop app says it's updated, but I see no content inside my Dropbox folder.

Application Affected
Dropbox desktop app
Device
Mac Studio 2025
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Sequoia 15.6.1
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
232.4.5988

I got a pop up telling me that Dropbox would no longer be supported on my old iMac if I didn't upgrade my operating system. Unfortunately, I was at the end of the line as far as what I could upgrade, so purchased a new Mac Studio M4. Haven't been able to get Dropbox installed for almost 3 weeks. I am a professional photographer and I use Dropbox as an integral part of my workflow and have for years. Not having it functioning is greatly affecting my ability to do my job and at this point, also my mental health. 

I only have a small hard drive on this new computer so my Dropbox "lives" on a 4tb external. It started with hundreds of conflicted copies which I should have known was a sign that things were not healthy in any way. It seems from what I can gather that I am in some strange download-offload-syncing loop that I can't stop even though I have my preferences set to the correct drive, to keep everything locally offline and my selective sync folders are showing what I'd like to be cloud only and what I'd like to live on a drive.

Tech support doesn't reply on the weekends but it doesn't matter because so far they have been unable to help and most of their suggestions have taken lengthy amounts of time to complete with zero forward progress. The most recent suggestion (which I did only after losing 7-ish days to a verrrrrry slow indexing process that stalled 3 separate times at exactly 306,852 items remaining) was to create a new user on my new computer, which I did. I set dropbox up to only selectively sync one folder as a test within that username. It took just minutes to index AND sync and I was very hopeful that I had found the solution. But when I opened the test folder, none of the images were actually viewable or editable because they aren't really there. They have the download symbol next to them and I have to individually click them to prompt a download. Then if I click the download symbol the images download and then immediately are synced back up to the cloud. So the images are nowhere....except the online version of dropbox. (and of course my backups but that's beside the point)

The worst part of the week happened just now when I went back to my regular username that has all of my software and my mail etc and now......my very intentional curated list of folders (which still shows those folders as synced) isn't reflected in my dropbox on my computer and now has only one folder in it listed in the finder and it's empty. Of course it's the test folder from the new username. Unlike in the new user though, the images aren't downloading and offloading constantly. The folder is showing as empty. And my dropbox says it's up to date. The drive still shows that 3.5 TB are used so the images are absolutely there, just invisible to me completely. And Dropbox thinks it has fully synced and is up to date.

Is there anyone out there who can help me?