The Dropbox desktop app on my Windows 11 is stuck "indexing" files.

Hey Cuasimingo!

My pleasure, and thank you for troubleshooting this with me.

Keep in mind that normally Dropbox doesn't use all of your bandwidth. However, you can change that by manually setting the upload/download speed:

On your bandwidth settings, you can try to toggle Custom bandwidth settings on. If you know your connection speed, you can set your preferred Limit upload rate and Limit download rate.

If you toggle Custom bandwidth settings off, Dropbox will manage the bandwidth settings for best performance automatically. Setting your upload rate to a higher number than your connection is capable of will likely cause all other Internet activity on your network to slow significantly.

While you're at it, please feel free to try to reboot both your device, and router to see if that changes things at all. 

Can you clarify how long the Dropbox desktop app has been stuck at 'indexing', and if you rebooted your computer and internet router in the meantime?

-- About 8 hours, no computer or router reboot.

On a side note, have you tried adjusting your bandwidth settings through the app's preferences to see if it helps at all?

This is how those settings are, I was unaware that could be customized. What changes are recommended?

Also, do you have any 3rd party apps running on your computer that might be monitoring your files somehow?

You mean, like an antivirus? I've tried closing it for a moment to see if that helped but no, it didn't. Wouldn't know which other app could interfere. 

Lastly, can you right-click on your local Dropbox folder directly, go to its Properties and send me a screenshot of the next window you see there?

That would be a little above 130 k files

Keep in mind that I want to make sure that there are less than 300k files located in your Dropbox folder at the moment. In some cases, having more files than that can cause performance issues to the Dropbox app.

Thanks for your follow up

Hey Cuasimingo, thanks for all the details, and sorry to hear about that! 

Can you clarify how long the Dropbox desktop app has been stuck at 'indexing', and if you rebooted your computer and internet router in the meantime?

On a side note, have you tried adjusting your bandwidth settings through the app's preferences to see if it helps at all?

Also, do you have any 3rd party apps running on your computer that might be monitoring your files somehow?

Lastly, can you right-click on your local Dropbox folder directly, go to its Properties and send me a screenshot of the next window you see there?

Keep in mind that I want to make sure that there are less than 300k files located in your Dropbox folder at the moment. In some cases, having more files than that can cause performance issues to the Dropbox app.

Thanks!

This is very difficult to explain because Dropbox did something very strange for the first time in many years of using the system. Dropbox support concluded that the files were lost and there was nothing to be done, but after that, Dropbox began to sync my entire Dropbox folder in the computer HD which took overnight. Now, it's being stuck indexing as shown in the image, two files. Assuming they are large files, I can understand it can take even a couple of hours, but six? I'm just worried that Dropbox is not a reliable way to backup files anymore. This behavior is absolutely strange. That message only changes from showing what you see to Indexing 2 files and no uploading.

Welcome to the community Cuasimingo​ Sorry to hear you're ealing with missing files recently. On the Dropbox desktop app, “indexing” means the app is preparing your files and folders to sync, and it can take a while after a big change or a large number of files.

So first thing to consider, how many files are you actually indexing? If you can share a screenshot of the exact status message in the Dropbox taskbar window (and whether the indexing count changes), we can help narrow it down.