See folders on website but not laptop

[Doug K.17]

I havent been on Dropbox for about a year, I consult witha company tht has a Business account. The gentleman I work with at the company created a new folder and shared it with me. I can see it on the website but not my computer. I created a new folder on the website and shared it with my boss. I can't see that folder on my laptop either. I use to use selective syncs to turn on and off folders to use but cant find it on the website. Does Smart Sync come included with the Business account? They may already have it.

Oh and I upgraded to Windows 10 is that going to be an issue? Any help will be appreciated. I already wasted an hour on this and nothing seems to work.

[Lusil · Accepted solution]

Hey there @Doug K.17. 

As per your question concerning selective sync, please note that you can manage your files and folders with this feature via the Dropbox desktop app. And, indeed, Smart Sync does come with the Dropbox Business subscription. For more info on what each plan offers, check out this page. 

As per your concern, I’m going to mention a slight checklist below, bare with me and we’ll take it from there. 

First, can you please check if you’re connected to the same Dropbox account that you see on your plan page across all your devices? You can see which email address is linked to your Dropbox desktop app by clicking on the Dropbox icon, selecting the gear icon and navigating to your Account tab in Preferences. 

Furthermore, when you click on the Dropbox icon, what does the status read? If you don’t see the Dropbox icon, please try downloading the latest version of the Dropbox desktop application. 

Finally, could you please see if you have any incompatible characters by running a bad file check?

Thanks in advance!

[Doug K.17]

Hi Lusil,

Thanks for your response. Through a derivative of what you shared I did get selective sync working on my laptop. When I reinstalled DropBox and changed the setting to Local and then turned off most folders in selective sync and judt kept the few I need on this phase of the project. By only selecting a couple of folders to sync I saved my hard drive from being overloaded.

As to what plan my company has I don't know, we have been using Dropbox for about 5 years and we do have unlimited space. I emailed the company plan admin the things you suggested we try, she has the privlidge to check them. I think we may be grandfathered in to have Smart Sync for all our users but will get a difinitive answer from our admin hopefully today.

Thanks again.

Doug

[Lusil]

Hi @Doug K.17, that’s not a problem! 

When you’ve got any update on the matter, don’t hesitate to get back to me. In the mean time, have a great day ahead!

[jgrbic]

I have the same problem and don't see any solution posted here! if someone could help that would be great thanks!

[Walter]

Sorry to hear that @jgrbic.

Could you please let me know the following for troubleshooting purposes?

1. The status of the desktop app on your computer(s). Click below to see more:

Spoiler

You can always look at the Dropbox icon in your taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (Mac) and see if it is done syncing. When Dropbox is fully synced then you should see a tick followed by the words “Up to date” on the menu.

If you do not see this then can you please let me know what the message being displayed reads?

2. If there are files in your Dropbox that may have problematic file names, by giving our lookup tool a go from the following page directly:

• https://www.dropbox.com/bad_files_check 

3. If there might be an incompatible character within your file or folder names:

• https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/files-not-syncing

Thanks in advance!

[Filipe N]

Hello

I have the same problem. A friend shared a folder with me that contains 3 subfolders. If I acces dropbox via web I see all 3 subfolders and their content. However, on my local computer I only see 2 of the subfolders.

What I have done to debug the issue:
- Checked the dropbox status on the dropbox system tray icon. Status: up to date.

- Confirmed the account I'm accessing via web and laptop are the same. Confirmed.

- Checked dropbox on my Android phone via an app (ES File Explorer). I can see all 3 subfolders

- I exited the drop box system tray application and started it again. No success

- Checked selective sync settingc on my local computer to ensure the folder was included in sync operations. It was. For testing, I disabled one of the folders that synced before and the one that did not sync. Confirmed that the folder that was previously there was removed from my local computer. Then I reenabled them again to sync everytyhing. One of the folders appeared (the one that was previously there in the first place), but not the third folder that never synced with my local computer. No success (it is strange though that the drop box selective sync menu does see all 3 subfolders)

- I checked the shared folder using the dropbox app on my local computer instead of windows file explorer. However, it only sees the 2 of the 3 subfolders.

- Attempted to check for bad file names using https://www.dropbox.com/bad_files_check, but the page becomes unresponsive (Chrome, Firefox)

Dropbox version is v96.4.172. Operating system is Windows 10 Pro Build 10.0.18363

Any ideas further ideas what the issue might be?

Thank you,

Filipe

[Mark]

Bad files check has been down for awhile now. Instead just make sure the folder names do not have illegal characters in it such as ./,; etc.

If it does remove them online and it should start to sync

[Filipe N]

Hello Mark,

Thank you for the prompt reply. I noted in the meanwhile that the problematic subfolder had actually a pipe '|' character as part of the name, so asked the owner to rename the folder to remove the pipe. Replacing the pipe by a different character worked. The folders is now available on my local PC.

Thank you,

Filipe