Delete a file only from dropbox - not my hard drive

[janine t]

I am  finding  that dropbox is not very user friendly - I only have the basic setup as occasionally I have to send files to friends.

As my dropbox seems to be full I want to delete some files to save space but it keep saying it will delete the file from my hard drive (so I cancel as I don't want to lose my original file)  

I never set up syncing or backups so why is it doing this? 

Surely there should be an option for only deleting from dropbox?

and if I am somehow syncing how do I turn it off? or does that message come up no matter what?

So if I go ahead with my delete will it delete my original?

[Mark]

Hi @janine t 

Its doing this because that is what Dropbox is designed, intended and supposed to do. Dropbox is a syncing tool, so, whatever you do inside of the Dropbox folder replicates online and to all connected devices. So, if you delete something at Dropbox online it deletes also on the computer. However, it will ONLY delete in the Dropbox folder on your computer - nowhere else. 

So, a work around to this is simply move it out of the Dropbox folder on your computer to another place. That will delete from Dropbox but leave it on your computer 🙂