What does 'refresh to update' on my offline files mean? How can I do it?

This unnecessary "feature" is bugging me for months, and its never ever works! Wherever I pull refresh, files are still with yellow icon. Im not even sure what I'm paying for :/

Maybe DropBox should focus on file sync (a.k.a. why people use it ) and not becoming cloud-based-evernote-basecamp-whatever-tool. 

I couldn’t agree more, Itsmaku.  DB seems to direct more resources to developing sales gadgets than to keeping their core functions running.  
BTW, don't be fooled by the 'Resolved' button, the refresh only seems to try to download all files again (may take hours or days), just to end up with many 'yellow !' icons and 'blue chasing-arrow' icons again.  It is just broken, and that is all there is to it. I can't see DB giving this any priority, or they would have done so by now, imo.

This does not solve the problem.  Working you way through a large number of sub folders and opening each one is a ridiculous method of keeping offline files current.  I was embarrassed and frustrated during a sales presentation when files that I had saved offline were completely unavailable.  This should be fixed, but my understanding from these forums is that it's being ignored.

Yes, many have the same problem.

I'm now halfway through testing to see if OneDrive is a viable alternative.  So far it seems to work well, especially the local files.

If all is ok, I'll switch as DB is not working for me anymore.

Well, Dropbox local files are still not working proply on my iPad, so after almost a year I say goodbye to DropBox and moved to OneDrive. Reasons:

1: Onedrive is as slow as DropBox in uploading, but does properly deal with local files on iPad (etc.). 

2: Dropbox is now twice the price.  It gives you twice the storage, but as uploading is so terribly slow, it would probably take months to upload to that extra space.  More importantly, I don't need all that space.

3: DropBox support has proven to be preactically absent.  They seem to develop gadgets for their sales team, but do not keep core functionality working on their platforms.

I agree, I'm moving off Dropbox when my prepaid year expires, this is unacceptable.  I already know Amazon's and iCloud is terrible for sharing your files on different OS's, so I'll try onedrive.

I've now moved away from DB for a couple of months.  Nothing is perfect, but OD is doing quite a good job, and it does all I need when managing offline files without any problems.  Go luck with the move, sma80.