cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Announcements
Want to learn some quick and useful tips to make your day easier? Check out how Calvin uses Replay to get feedback from other teams at Dropbox here.

Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

How do I prevent automatic synching of new folders?

How do I prevent automatic synching of new folders?

Bernd P.
Explorer | Level 4
Go to solution

Dear Community,

I am using what is for me a basic feature of dropbox, i.e. working on files stored on several computers, which are synched when modified.

So, no problem when we have the folders A, B and C and whenever one of us is updating a file in one of these folders, they appear via synching on they other PCs, eg. X, Y, Z,

Now my problem: If I create a new folder called NEW, it appears automatically on all three PCs  X, Y and Z which I may not want for (at least) two reasons:

1. computer Z will have space problems because of files in NEW

2. user of Y should not have access to the folder NEW

Yes, I could tell user of Z or Y to deselect synching of NEW, but I would like to be able to prevent the automatic synching of folder NEW at the moment of creating it.

 

Is this possible, and how?

 

Thanks in advance, Bernd

Ps. For simplicity I just have one top folder C:\Dropbox (or D:\Dropbox) on our Windows PCs, so the initial folders would be

C:\Dropbox\A  , C:\Dropbox\B  and C:\Dropbox\C the new folder would be C:\Dropbox\NEW

 

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Rich
Super User II
Go to solution

No, that's not possible. Any new files or folders will automatically sync to other computers. Once they've synced, you need to use Selective Sync to remove folders that you don't want on that system.

While this won't prevent access to the folders, if you have a Plus, Professional or Business account, you can set certain comptuers to sync new content as Online-only using Smart Sync. The folders will appear on the computer, but the content is only online. This would prevent the space issues such as on Computer Z, but it doesn't prevent access.

View solution in original post

4 Replies 4

Rich
Super User II
Go to solution

No, that's not possible. Any new files or folders will automatically sync to other computers. Once they've synced, you need to use Selective Sync to remove folders that you don't want on that system.

While this won't prevent access to the folders, if you have a Plus, Professional or Business account, you can set certain comptuers to sync new content as Online-only using Smart Sync. The folders will appear on the computer, but the content is only online. This would prevent the space issues such as on Computer Z, but it doesn't prevent access.

Bernd P.
Explorer | Level 4
Go to solution

Hi Rich, thank you for your clear answer.

I suppose I can prevent access if I use another username for the folder NEW,  but I suspect that I  would need two separate contracts = pay double.

Or are there any other tricks? Example: in a system called nextCloud one can have with one contract up to at least five different users which would allow me to apply this trick (in fact in this system it isn't a trick, it is foreseen this way).

Bernd

 

Rich
Super User II
Go to solution

The problem is that you're using a single account for multiple users, when a Dropbox account is meant for a single individual. It's not meant to be shared by multiple people. To Dropbox, everyone using a single account is seen as the same person, so there's no need to limit access to files that the account is the owner of.

What you should be using is Dropbox Business, which allows each person to have their own account, and the team admin can control who has access to various folders using groups.

Bernd P.
Explorer | Level 4
Go to solution

Hi Rich,

 

thank you very much for this answer.  So it looks as if I could operate in the way I wanted.

Best regards, Bernd

Need more support?
Who's talking

Top contributors to this post

  • User avatar
    Bernd P. Explorer | Level 4
  • User avatar
    Rich Super User II
What do Dropbox user levels mean?