MacOS Ventura - Dropbox Backup Issues

[amschulman]

Hello - As of yesterday (5/6/23), the three **critical** folders that are being backed-up by Dropbox Backup (Desktop, Downloads and Documents) are no longer visible or accessible on the desktop. The alias I have for the Downloads folder in my dock now shows the folder as empty (which it certainly isn't) and when I try to view my Desktop from the sidebar of a Finder window, I get this error:

"The folder “Desktop” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents."

Thankfully, the files are all still saved in Dropbox.com (I can see them), but I NEED to be able to access these folders locally.

I've seen similar posts in the community, but nothing that actually answers the question: What do I do to fix this? 

Thanks so much.

[Megan]

Hi @amschulman, let's see what we can find together on this! 

If you locate your Dropbox folder, do you get the same error? If so, can you attach a screenshot of the error, please? 

Have you tried choose Home from the Finder's Go menu, control-click the Desktop item, choose Get Info, and give yourself access?

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there!

[amschulman]

Thank you so much, Megan - that was very helpful. I was able to unhide hidden folders and now can see the master backup folder within the Dropbox folder in the Finder. I then went and changed the permissions for each of the folders within that backup folder (Downloads, Desktop and Documents) and most everything has returned to normal. Yay!

The only thing (that I can tell) that is still weird is that the master backup folder, called "My Mac (MacBook-Air-7)," is still showing up as a hidden folder (it's name is grayed out in the Dropbox folder) in the Finder. The folders within it that I mentioned above are NOT hidden, but that master folder is. 

Is there a way to fix that?

Thank you so much,

Andrew

[Hannah · Accepted solution]

Hey @amschulman, thanks for the update here.

I'm afraid that this is the expected behavior with the backup folder and there's no Dropbox way of changing this.

I hope this clarifies things, though, and if you have any other questions, please let us know.

[amschulman]

Thanks so much, @Hannah and @Megan!

[Hannah]

Not a problem, Andrew! 

See you around the Community!