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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
Adam S.8
New member | Level 1

+1000000000

Metalworks M.
New member | Level 2

http://konolige.com/dbignore/ exists for Mac OSX. It's .gitignore for Dropbox, but the instructions are a bit advanced.

Anyone care to figure it out and write simple step-by-step HowTo?

Josh C.7
New member | Level 1

I would love to see this feature as well. Please Dropbox, please!

Francesco Z.2
New member | Level 1

Wouldn't be great to have a .droppoxignore file that works as the .gitignore file?

Christian K.24
New member | Level 1

Hi,

I am using Dropbox 3.2.6 for Windows. Dropbox offers the possibility to exclude certain folders from synchronization. I suggest that there is added a functionality to exclude certain files from synchronization.

Dropbox excludes already certain system files such as desktop.ini. These are Windows system files... other software might add to the list of files that should not be synchronized. For instance, Thunderbird creates a file parent.lock in order to avoid that a second version of Thunderbird is started in parallel. This file is locked and may not be touched: it leads to a synchronization failure. It would be great if I could edit the list of files not to by synchronized and add files such as parent.lock

Best
Chris

Matteus M.
New member | Level 1

+1 for .dropboxignore

Sam N.
New member | Level 1

+1

Daniel A.47
New member | Level 1

+1
I would also like to see this feature implemented for the reasons already listed!

Timm S.
New member | Level 1

.dropboxignore or similar would be amazing!

Alessandro Z.
New member | Level 2

+1 please Dropbox do it!

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1,363 votes received Status: Investigating