how to change selective sync to sync all?

[Carey D.]

Whether this actually works to sync all, even as new folders may be created on other machines, I have not yet tested.  But even if it "works" this is absolutely terrible UI and UX. 

The app continues to represent itself in the UI as set to "Selective Sync", rather than "Sync All" is not just bad user interface and user experience, it's just plain wrong. The user would naturally intuit that they were NOT getting everything. So that's point point one. 

Point Two is regarding the non-existence of a master "click once to select all" checkbox. While such features are generally nice to have, in this case what is a much more pressing issue is the ability to have a setting that properly and intuitively allows the user to return to "Sync All". 

Dropbox is clearly a company that cares about UI and UX very much and for the most part have crafted a quality product that users are happy to pay for even though there are lower cost alternatives. I'm certainly one of them. But that point is what makes this omission in the software all the more glaring.

[Alexis G.1]

Carey.

I agree with you in one item: I would like an On/Off button for Selective Sync, so when you turn ON selective sync, you see the list of folders and you can customize the folders you want to sync or not.

If you disable selective sync, it's like "Sync All"...

I prefer this behavior instead of mark again all check boxes for folders.

[Cathy P.3]

I'm also having problems with trying to change from selective sync while setting up a new computer to sync all. When I do it by checking all the check boxes, instead of checking the current contents of the folder against the online content and updating, it creates a Selective Sync Conflict folder and proceeds to start downloading everything. I thought I'd sorted it the other day and stopped the download by copying from the Selective Sync into the new folder. It seems I didn't check all the folders.

Today I've discovered that the Camera Upload folder isn't syncing nor is the Public folder and a couple of others that don't matter so much as they're currently empty but are shared folders.

I check them to be synced and it says it's updating and then far too quickly Dropbox reports it's up to date and I go back and they're all unticked again.

Very frustrated. If I uninstall and reinstall I have no confidence I won't be back here again.

I've used Dropbox for years and shifted computer and never had this problem before.

HELP

[Jona S.]

I tried the suggestion to simply "check all boxes" and this does not work as expected.  

When I look at the dropbox folder size on my PC it is about 37GB.  However, from the web portal I can see that the actual size is around 200GB.  

[Jan F.8]

Agree with Carey. I doubt it will work when we create new folder. even if it does, its terrible UX. 
I am using Macbook pro and it doesn't sync new folder.

NOT ANSWERED.

[Carey D.]

Yeah look, they've got a real pribelm with the software in regards to this. I'm willing to bet the Dropbox team is well aware of this.

Knowing a thing or two about software development, I know that solving this via a software update is not all that hard as the functionality to sync all already exists. They need to update the UI to allow. Sync all /selective sync toggle, and have it set the appropriate client flags in their software that communicates with their back end. Not trivial, but not hard at all to solve.

Their silence on this issue is deafening.

[danielmahon]

Edit: Looks like the proper way to do this IS to select all of your top-level folders in the selective sync options as new folders WILL be added to sync by default.

Fastest way I got this to work (on macOS) was to delete the folder:

~/.dropbox

This resets the dropbox configuration and you will trigger Dropbox to run setup again on next launch. Then you can choose "Sync Everything" when asked. This way you don't need to completely uninstall or delete your Dropbox folder.

[Rich]

There's no need to uninstall/reinstall or delete anything. You simply go into the Selective Sync settings and make sure that everything is checked. If everything is checked, then Dropbox will sync all of your folders. There is no option to "Sync All" because one isn't needed. If everything is checked, then everything is syncing.

Remember to give everything time to download after checking the folders. Dropbox will need to re-download anything that was previously not syncing to the computer, and that will take time.

[danielmahon]

Last time I tried that, new folders created on a different computer were not automatically synced. Maybe they fixed that issue?

[Rich]

That was likely never a issue for everyone, and probably something more specific to your account or computer. Typically, new folders are ALWAYS synced regardless of where they're created or what your Selective Sync settings are.