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Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Tom_M
Helpful | Level 6

Please please please can you add a feature that allows folders to be excluded from the Dropbox account (on windows and mac). For sure I'm not the first person to request this, but I'm yet to find a good explanation of why it's not there. A quick google search reveals loads of people also looking for the same feature. I really like the workflow I have with dropbox, but it's getting to the point where I might switch providers in order to allow better selective sync.

I've seen hackish solutions using selective sync, but it would be great if this could be done in one of the following ways:
- global pattern matching eg "node_modules"
- a marker file in the directory like .dropboxignore
- a simple right click context menu "Ignore this folder"

Other than that, keep up the good work. Cheers.
Tom

Latest Update
Emma
Community Manager

Hi folks, 

 

Thanks for your feedback on this.
While ignored files delivers for some of the use cases here, I appreciate it does not for all. 
We'll be taking another review of this thread to isolate use cases for a .dropboxignore file feature in particular.

I've updated the status and we'll take this to the product team.
As a side note, it would be helpful for us if you could outline the gap between what ignored files offers, and what a .dropboxignore file feature would add to your workflows.

 

Thank you.

Status changed to: Investigating
973 Comments
Matt M.60
New member | Level 1

+1001. I'm a titch insulted by dropbox continuing to ignore this thread. And I'm getting desperate enough to look for other solutions. btsync isn't good enough because I need my in-progress projects in the cloud, not just on my own computers. I don't trust MEGA. Despite my disappointment at the moment, I trust dropbox, and want you guys to get this feature in production.

Jeremy B.
New member | Level 2

Insulted? I couldn't agree more.

Meanwhile Dropbox continues to consume > 100% CPU with nothing being done. Starting to get a little peeved with their ignorance of this issue.

Vikas Y.2
New member | Level 1

Any updates from Dropbox on this?

Jochen T.
New member | Level 1

+1 PLEASE add this!!!

Kyle W.15
New member | Level 1
+1
Martijn S.3
New member | Level 1

+1

Hekar K.
New member | Level 1

This feature is a must. Keep it simple. I don't want to have to switch to "Selective Sync". It's a waste of my time.

 

TLDR: +1

Jeffrey F.9
New member | Level 1

Anyone know if this has been looked into as a feature or future idea or is it dead. I recently have ran into my keepass lock file being sync'd and screwing up my keepass because the lock file isn't erased so keepass thinks the password file is still there.

It's be great to setup a black list or ignore list for dropbox to look at when syncing.

thanks

Jeff

 

Kevin H.53
New member | Level 1

My research includes sometimes generating files that are large and I don't need to sync (12GB+). More often than not, I just need them for a little while and then a new similar file is generated. This keeps my DB in a constant not syncing state but I do need to keep my code synced. Because the code is being used in different computers and settings with different privileges, generated file must be within the code's parent folder.

I can live with the unnecessary syncing of all the compilation generated files that my IDE creates, but a .dropboxignore file (or any other means to exclude particular files and file patterns) would definitely be so useful.

An exclude option comes with the CLI for Linux, why isn't there a similar thing for Windows?

Jake s.8
New member | Level 1

A nasty trick that helps is to create a directory with the filename of the file you wish to ignore, then use selective sync to remove it and then any normal file with that same name is ignored. Unfortunately, you need to do this with a lot of mouse clicks, "dropox exclude" does not seem to work. It's really sad I need to do this shit on something that should be technically easy to implement, even if just for linux users...

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1,362 votes received Status: Investigating