Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

I can't believe this has been there for nearly 2 years and still not resolved!

+1

@Mitchell, I'm not sure how excluding folders with selective sync is a workaround for ignoring folders without selective sync. It's just using selective sync.

I wrote to contact (as paid user) about this with this content:

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Dear dropbox, what happened with you?, your clients need something, you have a channel for that and do you listen it?, I love dropbox, but we need this feature in this time. Do you love us?

This topic is very important for us, on the forum it is the most voted case (actually there 2 with the same issue), c'mon, help us, I don't want to get in love to other, you are not me, it's your turn.

Look the two topics on the forum:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201289669-Ignore-folder-without-selective-sync-
https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201529949-Why-won-t-Dropbox-add-a-gitignore-like-feature-

This works: http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/exclude-folders-from-syncing
Not ideal but it's an easy workaround.

+1

I have actually resorted to in one case name a file I don't want to be transferred to dropbox (unencrypted version of an encrypted password file) with a ~ prefix BUT totally a head scratcher that the product wouldn't have this inherent control.

Also while the above works for 1 file how about a checked out Subversion copy that has automatically has a .svn file in EACH subfolder with literally hundreds of folders in a file tree.

Sure I could remove all these files or rename them with a UNIX command but then the working copy won't be able to sync to Subversion anymore which kind of defeats the purpose.

So every time the code in one or dozens of files and one or dozens of these .svn folder/files gets updated.  I literally have to turn off Dropbox as I've noticed an increase on upload and download bandwidth that is quite large and possibly excessive - need to test further....  Lack of an exclusion filter makes this even more painful...

Reducing bandwidth is a win-win for my system, Dropbox servers and everyone in between EXCEPT for ISPs unless you exceed quota and THEN the win-win is for the ISP only :-(

Another use case: I sync some "Local Folders" in Postbox which is basically archived email. It is very rarely updated except for two cases: The .msf files are apparently an index file of some sort and don't actually need to be backed up but seem to be frequently updated causing lots of useless syncs. Also, every time an email is sent it first gets copied to Unset Messages file so both Unsent Message and Unsent Messages.msf are updated and synced needlessly. I could possibly use hardlinks to try to exclude these files but that would be very tedious and I'd have to set that up on all of my PCs individually.

I'd also like to have alternative ways of ignoring files/folders from Dropbox sync. Waiting for Mac desktop client to sync all folders already takes minutes and I imagine it will only get worst as the filesystem grows.

Melle B.

It does more than just that. It would also delete the content of folders from your computer. Use with caution!

On the contrary, it won't delete anything from Dropbox servers. Hence your node_modules would remain synced on other computers ad infinitum.

In other words, `dropbox exclude` does not solve the problem.