Dropbox keeps (re)indexing and syncing after activating smart sync

[Wietse V.]

I've recently activated the smart sync functionality for my teams account. When I did, Dropbox started indexing and syncing a huge number of files which made sense to me because it needed to download all shortcuts to online files (the ones y had previously saved online only using selective sync). However, after finishing the whole process (after a day or so of syncing), and restarted my laptop, Dropbox seems to have started the process all over again. And today again. When hovering over the dropbox icon in the taskbar, the pop up message mentions hundreds of thousands of files to be indexed and uploading/downloading tens of thousands of files too. These numbers go down slowly (syncing in progress) but then go up again as if the whole process starts all over. 

Is this a know issue? Normal behaviour? Any suggestions about what I could do to solve this?

I'm running Windows 7 and Dropbox v47.4.74

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[MrV]

Thanks Lusi,

I have been busy with work and it seems that things are working on my work computer which is good. Will have to check back at my surface go and see if it's still missbehaiving. You don't notice it as much when connected to fiber as it does the stupid operation quicker but it defenetly cost me money when it did it without me realising while the computer was connected to my phone as a hotspot. 

Thanks for your assitance so far.

[Lusil]

Thanks for keeping me in the loop, glad to hear that it's resolved for one of your devices, @MrV. 

Also, thanks for taking the time to share what did the trick for you, @DragonLover - awesome work! 

@maffye and @Hitch, if you're still having trouble, could you send me a screenshot (without personal info) of what your Dropbox icon shows when you hover over it?

Let me know of any updates, peeps!

[sidejo]

I have the same issue since updating to Catalina. Shows syncing 320k, uploading 208k with no real changes on my end.

I'm pretty sure I don't have that many files there in Selective Sync.

[Lusil]

Hey @sidejo, thanks for the screenshot! Definitely helps me understand what you're seeing. 

In general, if you have a lot of files in your Dropbox folder, it's recommended that you selectively sync folders to help improve the performance of the desktop app. 

Also, I can see from your screenshot that you have the beta version (xx.3.xx) installed. Could you try installing the stable version (xx.4.xx), to see if that helps, by:

1. Going to your General tab. 
2. Unchecking the option to Include me in early releases.
3. Downloading and installing the latest version.

Let me know how it goes!