Deleted folders keep reappearing

[Adam L.4]

I'm hoping someone can help with this problem. I have been using Dropbox for a few years across a number of devices (2 desktop Macs, a laptop, an iPhone and an iPad). This last week, when I try to delete a folder it reappears a moment later. If I move it into another folder, the same thing happens. I have checked and all my other devices are switched off or not trying to sync while I am doing this. Any advice on how to stop it?

Thanks!

[DaveC2]

@Seetharama D. : excellent additional info, on imagining it, that is very logical, when a folder is erased all the files one by one are ordered removed from the DB cloud, but the not synced folder is never present so is never ordered to be removed. The end result is there is a path to that not synced folder that never is removed from DB so reappears but empty.

[John U.]

@Dave , I am wondering how you knew which machine is uploading the files again?

[DaveC2]

@John U : its the machine that could not delete them, since all that can wont have the files anymore. The one that cant still does, so must do something with them, and it chooses to upload them again. (in reality it is just doing its job, it deletes the file, it finds a file it, uploads a file, the DB app doesnt know it didnt delete it, it might have deleted it and some other program immediately generated a new file of the same name at the same place.
If you need to know which user/device did this, you use the web interface and check the previous versions of the file for the one that recreated it.

[COE I.]

I was able to solve this same problem by deleting the folder from on the dropbox website interface.

[Kindy K.]

I just had this problem and it turned out that there were some files in a folder, but they couldn't be copied to the windows installation of dropbox because they had illegal filenames in windows.  Specifically, they had single quotes and double quotes (at least one of those isn't legal in a file name).  

These files were created on the mac a years ago, and somehow they keep appearing on my various computers despite my best efforts to eliminate them.

Anyway... I fixed the problem by

1. Going to the web version of dropbox
2. Upgrading to the dropbox that allows you to see file versions (which used to be standard with a premium account)
3. Locating the illegally named files
4. Renaming them to legal names
5. Permanently deleting the old file (just in case)
6. Moving / deleting the newly renamed files

This problem could probably also happen with illegally long file names and unicode characters in file names.  These are all problems that I have encountered and which have given me more grey hair than nearly anything else in my life.  

I'm pretty sure that was possible on the Mac create idiotic file names that are not valid in Linux, Windows, or even across all Macs.  I'm not interested in reproducing this error for the mac fanboys out there.

PS: This is Gene, Kindy's husband, not Kindy.  She's not this cranky, at least not on public forums.  We just use the same Dropbox account. 

PPS: Before you get mad at Dropbox, you should know that Dropbox is better than anything else at managing these sorts of problems.  From a programming perspective, Dropbox is freaking amazing.  So please save your anger for the many other less amazing software products out there. 

[Sean B.31]

Ok so it seems as though I've had the same problem as everyone else. My Dropbox was working fine, had some folders on there that mostly contained music. However, I recently backed up a bunch of different computers and used Dropbox to store the files. This ended up being ~200k+ files. Initially, the Dropbox app synced it until I deselected it using selective sync. What I did not expect to happen afterwards, and ended up causing my Mid-2015 13" Macbook Pro Retina to start blowing out air like it was on fire, was that it had to download what was then a massive file list. I guess Dropbox calls this "indexing", despite the fact I had already chosen for it not to sync. So access Dropbox though the browser and delete the folder that contains all the files. Didn't work. Uninstalled and reinstalled the app, nothing. Today, I went back and saw the folder had reappeared as others have stated. Deleted it again, froze my browser so I force quit. I come back and it's gone, I double check the event log and it states that 200k+ files were deleted. I check the icon in the menu bar and it still shows its attempting to download and index the file list, so I go to security settings through the browser and unlink all the old devices I no longer use, as well as the computers I had to backup. Still the same issue occurred. Then, what ultimately solved the problem was simply deleting the Dropbox folder on my computer which then brought up a prompt window stating that "this computer used to be synced to your account, do you wish to place the folder back in its location or relink the account". Choose relink and login, problem solved.

[Dick T.1]

Don't know if this is a permanent fix but I had the same problem of a deleted folder reappearing.  I renamed the folder and then deleted it.  So far it hasn't reappeared.

[Andreas I.]

Are anyone tried this tool?

https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/files-not-syncing

Its a tool that checking for bad files.

[Raymond D.4]

I have the same issue with a "Client" folder, which if I delete in any combination it just comes back.  I have renamed and it just makes 2 files.  Moving and copying also result in 2 files being made, the new ones being able to be deleted fine.

Is this an issue that is likely to have a permanent fix as we have quite a few machines connected with selective sync on all of them so I can't remove them as it's many gb of files.

Many thanks.

[Server_Align]

Ray, Check the version history of the file for what machine keeps restoring the file after yuou erase it, fix that machine so it erases the file when you do.