The desktop app on my Mac has been stuck indexing files. I can only access some of them.

Hi Ben,

with a basic plan i cannot contact support. Can you help me out on this? I'm stuck in Indexing after a macOS upgrade and can't get out of it.

Best,

Lionade

Hey Lionade, welcome to our Community! 

Would you mind sharing some additional info with us, in order to have a precise idea of what's happening? 

How long is this happening, and what have you tried on your end? Your exact OS, and Dropbox version would also help a lot. 

I'll be waiting for your reply!

Hi Megan,

thanks for your fast reply!

I upgraded from macOS Monterey via Ventura to Sonoma 14.5 more or less in one go.

Before, I already had Dropbox installed using the File Provider (Folder stored under ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox instead of ~/Dropbox)

Then the sync got stuck for several hours on a 4 kb text file.

Then I logged out and logged in again as suggested in the thread above, leading to a new sync, firstly at the old location. Everything was fine there.

When asked to relocate to the File Provider location, I confirmed and got stuck with indexing, including the missing many of the files that were there before the relocation.

Now I started over (log out, login in, sync to old location) but am afraid to start the relocation process again.

Is that sufficient for the beginning?

Best,

Lion

Oh and the Dropbox Version is v201.4.5552

Hi Lionade, could you clarify where you saw that files were missing? Were they from random locations in your Dropbox folder, or from a specific folder?

Hi Jay,

There were several folders where there were just no files inside across the whole dropbox. Some top-level folders were missing, too.

It looked like the transfer from ~/Dropbox to ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox was still in progress, but there were no visible changes over hours. Furthermore, the Dropbox app told me the moving was successfully completed. And also the previous location ~/Dropbox was replaced by a Link to the new location.

Were the folders that didn't transfer over private or shared folders?

Are they shown as deleted files on the Dropbox site via the events page or deleted files page?

they were private folders. I didn't check wether there were also shared ones in the group.

and no, nothing changed in the dropbox site

maybe some more info for clarification:

by now i logged out again and logged in again, making dropbox download all folders again to the old standard location: ~/Dropbox

Here everything is present and no folders of files are missing as far as i can see. 

Also, no indexing problems exist.

However, I would like to activate the File Provider and use the new location ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox

The only thing I fear now is to run into indexing problems again, since this is what happened the last 2 times i tried it.

I hope I could clarify the problem 🙂

Could you try activating the File Provider migration with all other open apps closed (to prevent any conflicts) and let it run to see how it progresses this time?

Hi Jay,

I had to find a time slot to do what you suggested which was yesterday. After less than a minute a dialogue was shown which informed me that the transfer was completed, but checking is in progress now in the background. However, since then nothing has changed and the status below the Activity tab still shows "Indexing".

When I open the Dropbox folder on my mac with Finder, every single file and folder shows the cloud icon, giving me the text "Uploading" when I hover my mouse over them. Online, all the files I had in the Dropbox before the migration are there. Newly added files do not appear online.

Is there any place on my mac where I can see in more detail if the dropbox app is actually doing something or if it's just stuck in some loop or hanging due to a corrupt file or so?

Thanks a lot for your help and kind regards!

Lionade