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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
Mitchell N.2
New member | Level 2

Looking into it more, there seems to be something in the Dropbox command line for linux that potentially functions as adding things to a .gitignore; It's called 'EXCLUDE', but the actual operation of this command is not very clear, and it seems like people have had a lot of problems with getting it to work. I don't currently have a linux system with Dropbox intalled, so I can't test it myself right now (I'll probably do it later if no one else does.)

 

http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-official-dropbox-command-line-interface-cli#EXC...

 

Also, there does not seem to be an equivilant version for Windows. (Maybe someone can get it to work through the new Windows10 Bash console: http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/)

James W.78
Explorer | Level 3

Hey All, pardon my post if this has already been mentioned but this is a pretty good solution:

https://coderwall.com/p/guqrca/remove-all-node_module-folders-recursively

 

Using the command:

 

find . -name "node_modules" -exec rm -rf '{}' + 

 

will remove all of the node_module folders in the directory you're in, plus all child folders recursively.  Hopefully someone finds this useful.  

Michael D.31
New member | Level 2

Just canceled my paid account due to the lack of this feature and lack of communication. Went with bittorrent sync + NAS.

buntonn
Explorer | Level 3

+1 It would be great to have a .ignore file to add files/directores too that you want Dropbox sync to ignore.

mbigras
Explorer | Level 3

I .dropboxignore file would be great. I love using dropbox to back up my coding projects, but I want to ignore certain directories/files that match a specific pattern like for example the 'node_modules' directory or anything ending bin a '/bin' directory, this currently isn't possible as you have to specifically select each and every folder you want to ignore and there is no option for pattern matching. 

 

I know there's devs over at dropbox, pass this message forward 🙂 thanks people!

oopinou
New member | Level 2
It's a shame that such feature still not exists
Zapnologica
New member | Level 2

I think this would be a great feature. And it does not have to confuse your average consumer.

Simply allow for a GIT type ` .dropboxignore`  file to be put into a folder.

I store many visual studio projects on dropbox and when I build the solution it uploads 2000 tiny files which really are not needed to be backed up.

indigoconcept
Explorer | Level 3

 Couldn't agree more...this is killing us!  We are seriously considering moving away now as this topic has been around for ages and Dropbox seem content to ignore it.  I appreciate the developers are probably a very small percentage of their users but this, seemingly small, feature addition would help ensure that the likes of us stay with DB.

Here's hoping someone influential agrees and does something about it this time...

 

Rodd
Helpful | Level 6

PLEASE!

tomcask
New member | Level 2

+1

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1,362 votes received Status: Investigating