Edits being made by others are not showing on my end

[dansimpson]

We use Dropbox for a lot of shared files amongst our businesses.  It's come to my attention that several users out in our field are updating their files and making real-time changes, but those changes/edits are not showing up on my end.  I'll receive an email from my co-workers that says "just added to the file," but it won't show up on my end.  I've tried restarting my computer and exploring different Dropbox setting options, but have not had any success.  Any suggestions?  For the record, we have roughly 25 businesses that update their own files on a daily basis--this issue is only occurring for 3-4 of our business and I don't know how to get it resolved.  Any help is appreciated.

[Jay]

Hi @dansimpson, thanks for messaging the Community!

The first thing I'd like to check is how you're sharing the files? Are you creating a shared link to the file, or sharing the files directly to a Dropbox account, or lastly by sharing a folder with the file in it? The last two here point to the same link, but the editing method is slightly different.

Additionally, what type of file are you sharing among your colleagues?

Keep me posted!

[cjrhoads]

It doesn't look like anyone answered this, and I have experienced the same thing.  In the end we found out that the problem was that the person who was sharing the file had run out of space.  While I have several gigs of space on my dropbox, the people with whom I share files may only have the minimum (which I think might be 128 or 500 megs).  If I share a folder with them that is larger than the amount of space that they entitled to on their account (either free or basic), then they can make changes to the files locally, but they won't syncronize with the dropbox folder, so the changes never get migrated to my machine.  Similarly, if I make changes, they don't see them because their dropbox folder won't sync if they go over the limit.

I don't know if that's your problem, but I'm still looking for a solution to mine.  Temporarily I've set up a separate folder for each person so that they only get the files they need from the shared folder so that they don't go up to their size limit.  (If I put all the files in one folder and share the entire folder, the file size of EVERYONE's files count against EACH user.)

Hope that helps.  

[Walter]

Hi @cjrhoads; thanks for joining the discussion here. 

Allow me to clarify that, indeed, shared folders do take up space towards each member's quota unless they're all part of the same team account. This policy exists to prevent people from giving themselves unlimited storage space by stacking Basic accounts and shared folders and Spaces.

What you can do if you'd like to share a folder without impacting the recipient's quota, is share a link to the folder or Dropbox Space, instead which allows users to view or download a one-way, read-only copy of the folder or Space. 

On the other hand, if you'd like others to upload files to your Dropbox account without impacting their own quota, you can send a file request which would enable you to have files uploaded to your own Dropbox account by other individuals.

I hope this helps!