Syncing issue on macOS 10.15 Catalina

[care4rei]

I have a trouble of dropbox syncing on macOS 10.15 Catalina.When I restart my macbook pro, dropbox starts syncing all the time and it shows all my files in dropbox is syncing.The syncing may take a long long time，and when I restart my MBP，it starts over again and again and again.This problem starts with the beta version of macOS 10.15 to the stable version released 2 days ago.I have tried to pause the syncing or reinstall the dropbox application,but the problem never resolved.Please HELP！Thanks.

[chrisacam]

There is a problem with the App in Catalina, well more to do with the Mac OS new security features actually.

I fixed my sync issue, which is as described above exactly, by doing the following:

System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Privacy - Select Full Disk Access from the left and ensure that the Dropbox App has it's box ticked (you will need to click the locked padlock at the bottom of the window to put a tick in the box.

No need to uninstall / reinstall as others have suggested, for some reason Catalina defaults the Dropbox App to not having full disk access and you need to maually change that.

Chris

[Randy_]

I'm having the same problem and have tried changing the disk access to full. It does not seem to have changed anything. For days now, I have had 20,896 files to sync.

9,537 to upload and

11,358 to download. 

Once in a while it will say 100+ days to complete but there is no movment. I have check my bandwith and I have 100mb down and 60mb up. 

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling DB, unlink and relink sync folder, shutdown and restart both DB and my computer. So far, nothing has worked. The number of files to sync is growing. It started at around 1,700 a few days ago and continues to increase.   

Everything else seems to be working fine after the update to Catalina, only dropbox has been effected. 

[Fiona]

I appreciate your patience, troubleshooting this on your own. Since you have already tried reinstalling , as mentioned, I can create a ticket for you if you wish @Randy_ . 

I want to find out why the number is increasing instead of decreasing like it should when syncing is processed. I can also include technicians of another level of support in our email communication to help you solve this. 

Let me know if I can email the address associated with your Community profile. Thank you! 

[chrisacam]

Fiona I’ve had tickets raised for this which have been escalated to ‘advanced’ support people at Dropbox but with all due respect they’ve been useless!!
They simply keep suggesting the problem is due to symlinks or hard links and despite me responding to each and every support email as per the instructions, detailing exactly what I have found and tried, they are not getting back to me.
The problem is still present for me and an increasing number of users but Dropbox support is not doing anything to fix it.

Chris

[Fiona]

I am sorry to hear troubleshooting this has been a headache and thank you for sharing your feedback. When we know what is going on, we can take steps to improve our service and your experience. 

Having your ticket numbers, I can report feedback directly on your cases, add notes to help with the process and this way push it a step forward towards the resolution.

I will be more than happy to follow up with your cases @chrisacam. 

Thank you for your patience. 

[J-Sync]

I'm having the same problem on Catalina 10.15.1 with the latest stable version of Dropbox. On reboot, Dropbox starts syncing around 30,000 files. I don't think I have that many! It eventually completes, then repeats the behaviour on the next reboot.

I hope you find a fix for this soon.

[Fiona]

Welcome to our Community @J-Sync. Thank you for describing the situation there. You are on 84.4.170. Correct? If you are,  have you tried reinstalling the Dropbox desktop application, after this started happening? 

@chrisacam, I located some cases you had with us and reported your feedback. They are all closed. though. Since the technical difficulties are ongoing, I'd be more than happy to start a new ticket to help, with your permission.

Thank you both! 

[chrisacam]

@Fiona thank you. You may have seen cases as I have been trying to get your technical team to engage and resolve this. These cases should NOT have been closed as there is clearly still a problem. I did not request they be closed.

I responded to every email I received from the team, but did not get replies to my responses. They will say they sent replies but I never received anyting other than the initial case creation emails. And no, there is nothing in my Spam or Junk email!!

I gave up and am currently trialling alternative providers because it is obvious Dropbox do not care about these issues or ensuring their customers receive adequate responses.

If there is anything you are able to do, then great, but I suspect any raised or re-raised case will just be lost again.

This is really bad form on the part of Dropbox.

[Fiona]

I want to make up for the support experience you've had up to now. 

There are cases, where our emails don't go through. I found tickets that closed due to inactivity. So, I understand you were not receiving them. I have reported this experience. Is your email an Alias by any chance? (Alias is an email redirecting your emails to another address/inbox)

Do you have a firewall that could be blocking our emails? 

I want to start with suggesting to update to our latest stable version: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Desktop-client-builds/Stable-Build-84-4-170/td-p/375469

If this doesn't stabilize your syncing, I will personally create another case with you that I will follow up myself to make sure you are getting responses. 

Thank you @chrisacam. 

[chrisacam]

Thanks @Fiona.

No Firewall, No Alias.

No trouble with receiving the initial case-creation emails, only the follow ups don't seem to come through.

I'm currently on App v85.3.138 which is newer than the one you suggest I suspect.

Syncing as of today does seem more stable, so perhaps the App has done an auto-update.