Remove a file or folder from the Dropbox process completely

[Robolovsky1]

Whenever I search for something along the lines of "Remove a file or folder from Dropbox" I am always referred to the Selective Sync function. But all this does is stops the file from being synced to my hard drive. It doesn't stop it being synced to the online account. What I want to know is how do you simply stop syncing a folder to both the HD and online? In other words remove it from the Dropbox process completely.

A friend of mine, using the basic version, accidentally added their desktop folder to the sync process. The folders on the desktop were too large for a full sync and, in trying to delete Desktop from the whole dropbox sync process, ended up losing some important files from two folders on the desktop.

So how easy is it to simply remove a folder entirely from the Dropbox sync process (both off and online) without losing any data. Where do I go to and what do I need to click on etc.

[Walter]

Hi there @Robolovsky1; thanks for joining the Community!

You should be able to delete files from Dropbox using these steps,however, in the case of your friend, it seems like they enabled the computer backup feature.

At this point, you' will need to follow these steps to disable the feature. Upon that process, you'll get an option to leave the content in Dropbox or keep it on the computer.

Let me know if this helps!

[Robolovsky1]

Hi Walter. Thank you very much for your reply. I can see now that in my friend's case they must indeed have turned on the Computer backup feature and then tried to turn it off again with the result that two data folders on their desktop lost a large number of files.

I am assuming that the data loss was due to the actual desktop folders being replaced by the incomplete ones (incomplete because they had not been able to fully sync due to the data limit in the Basic account) in the Computer backup. So could you clarify which option they would have chosen in order for that to take place? Would it be "Keep content in folders on this PC/Mac" or "Leave content in Dropbox". Either way it still seems surprising that Dropbox would decimate the original files without warning.

[Walter]

To be honest, I can't be sure how this happened; have you asked them directly about this @Robolovsky1?

Did they look for the missing files in their recycle bin or their original locations, locally on their computer? 

[Robolovsky1]

Their recycle bin was empty. It was the folders in the original locations i.e. Desktop that were missing the files.

Today I went round there and tried myself. We had restored the missing stuff from a backup.

Following your link I turned off the Computer Backup completely and chose to keep files on the computer, i.e. not in Dropbox. I hit the button and a great deal of activity took place with Dropbox notifying us of many file deletions. After that I looked at the desktop and there was one file of 4.6GB missing. Luckily we had the backup so no big deal. There was also a "My files in Dropbox" folder which appeared to have most of the desktop files in it  including the large 4.6GB one.

Ultimately we restored the missing file from the backup and then deleted the duplicate files in Dropbox. Everything now back to normal but I can't help feeling that the process was less than perfect.