Spotlight Search Doesn't Link to Files in Dropbox in macOS 13 Ventura

Approach dsnidey's suggested fix with caution!! While I appreciated the suggestion, dsnidey's proposed fix not only burned many hours of my time but made my Dropbox situation much worse, at least with build v166.4.2920, resulting in the following additional issues (on top of the Spotlight Search problem):

• Many "Conflicted" copies of empty folders and files
• Getting stuck in sync that never resolved
• Subfolders of Selective Sync folders not syncing
• "Cannot communicate with helper" error messages

I'd recommend NOT following this procedure proposed by dsnidey, although it's partially helpful. After speaking with Dropbox customer service, they suggested instead simply installing the latest stable version.

I followed this slightly revised sequence of these steps, which fixed everything for me:

1. Click on your Dropbox MacOS app menu bar (not Dock) icon-->click on your profile icon-->go to Preferences.
2. Under Sync, go to "Select folders" then uncheck all folders synced to your Mac. Doing this will remove them from your Mac and leave them online ONLY. You'll need to wait a while (potentially hours) for this removal to finish. 
3. Go to your former /Users/Username/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox folder to make sure all files have been removed
4. Go to Dropbox MacOS app Preferences-->Account-->Sign out of account. This unlinks your Mac from your Dropbox account. You should see the Dropbox getting started screen.
5. Quit Dropbox and move the app to Trash. 
   1. I used a 3rd party AppCleaner removal tool to clear out all the Dropbox files from my root and user /Library folders, but you can also do this manually.
      1. Delete Dropbox folder & files from the /Users/Username/Library/ folder
      2. Delete Dropbox folder & files from the /Library/ folder 
6. Restart your Mac. 
7. Reinstall Dropbox by going to the Latest Stable Builds page, finding the latest version released by clientreleases and directly downloading the appropriate offline Installer for your MacOS.
8. After you reinstall and log in with your account, you can go back to and recheck your folders under Sync that you want to have both offline & online. The sync process could take a very long time depending on the size of your files and internet speed. 

I struggled with Spotlight issues after updating to the latest Dropbox MacOS release, but following these steps made Spotlight search work again for me, and all files synced as they should, including all subfolders. Although it took many hours for all my files to resync, everything was 100% back up and running. I hope this works for you too. Good luck!

IMPORTANT- if you get a prompt saying Dropbox is going to migrate your files to a new folder, the Dropbox advisor I spoke with advised NOT to do this. Otherwise, you may be back to square one. 

this solution does not work - I had to uninstall, remove everything, then fresh install and this time I am ignoring the update message in my dropbox dropdown menu - voila! spotlight will work, search works properly, you can select an external drive too, etc.

thanks - did this and it works

I confirm - this is THE only solution right now until Dropbox fix this

discovered prity interesting option today:)

https://mountainduck.io/

You can use it with Dropbox as well without using Dropbox software at all.

This [the post marked as solution] has not resolved the issue. 

Problem persists; seeing the files in the list of results, with a Finder icon, and unable to open them... frustrating!

I suppose using the 'old' Dropbox (not updating) could do it, but that does not feel right. 

Has anyone else successfully tried the mentioned 'solution'? To me, this thread is still unresolved!

I have had the problem mentioned here and your suggestion got the problem half-fixed.

system: macbook pro, macOS 13.2.1, DropBox v167.4.4719

Initial problem: Spotlight searches failed to find files in ~/Library/CloudStorage/DropBox (These are files that are "offline", i.e. locally stored.)

Partial solution: I rebuilt the Spotlight index. (https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201716)

Good Results: Spotlight searches now find files in DropBox!

Unresolved problem: When I go to the DropBox folder in the Finder and use the Finder search box in that window, searches fail on contents and name searches. (These same searches work fine when NOT limited to the DropBox folder.)

Note: In the terminal, the DropBox directory appears to be a symbolic link. 

Question: Is symlink the problem? Does Spotlight fail to recognize a symlink as a searchable "folder"? Is there a way to limit a Spotlight search to the DropBox 'folder'? thanks!

I have tried re-indexing but Search is still not working.   Can you please make the previous version of Dropbox available to MacOS users until such time as this is fixed?   Thanks!