Selective pause sync for specific folders or files

[danial1360]

It would be great to be able to pause syncing for specific folder and it's sub folders rather than pausing the whole Dropbox from syncing.

[Walter]

Thank you for your idea, while we can’t take every idea forward we do regularly re-review and will update you if anything changes!

[Lusil]

This idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team, so, we’ve updated the status to encourage more users to back you up.  

If you have any other questions or thoughts for us, just give us another shout. Thanks!

[olegzv]

My machine freezes because of dropbox and a single folder (it worked fine previously). I would love to turn it off out of sync, but instead, I have to turn off sync at all. And we don't have the option to turn on syncing by night. It seems like a joke: whether turn off for a moment or forever.

[susie_k]

This feature would be really great for me, as I would love to use dropbox as backup for vertual machine folder.  When I leave it to normal sync, it changes so may files so fast and the sync is literally backed up( i.e. congested) . So if I could un-pause when I quit the vertual machine, thne it just do the sync once and be done. 

[Creative Soul]

@Lusil - what do you mean "needs more support"?!!

The "Sync first" function does not work when there are loads of files in the queue so you cannot see the whole queue to find the one you need synced first... and sometimes it's a whole folder that needs to "Sync first". How about showing folders in the sync queue instead of only idividual files?

Dropbox users have been asking for this function for AGES just in different ways. How many times do we read about files getting stuck behind other files that are syncing? Don't tell me there's no enough support for this idea.

[ConorOC]

I would definitely like this as I am using dropbox to sync my 2TB full file archive. However it takes a long time uses a lot of memory and bandwidth, even though most of the files are essentially archived and not updated. What would be good would be to set time periods for syncing of these files (once every 2 weeks say). 

[Nick_Mulgan]

I would definitely like to see this.

We use ESRI *.gdb geographical databases, stored as a directory with about 100 files, for use in ESRI and QGIS GIS. *.gdb do not play nice with Dropbox (why should they, as a gdb directory is a proprietary database which thinks it owns all files in the directory).  However if no GIS is using the *.gdb then Dropbox is a convenient backup tool. For logistical reasons to do with when the gdb files are used the overhead of using a proper relational database for this work is inconvenient. So, being able to pause backup of a gdb directory would be very helpful.

[ophotography]

This would be great! Can't believe you are saying you need more backing to take this to your developers. It should already be a part of the system.

[James291]

I would also very much like to see selective pausing on folders. Currently we have many programs that do not work while dropbox is running. or we need to save files to our desktop and then move back to dropbox which is a administrator nightmare.  

These programs include: 12D, HEC-RAS & Tu-flow. 

Solving this problem would make your competitor's redundant, like 12D synergy and similar companies that have systems that work with these programs. 

[Kyrsten C.]

I am currently not able to get my client's files I saved to Dropbox this morning to "sync first" ahead of a folder I'm backing up and currently has 2-days remaining that I started loading to Dropbox over the weekend. I need to pause that specific large folder so my clients' files are able to sync ahead of it. There are tons of files in that folder so it basically is going to leave me no choice but to pull the folder out of dropbox (desktop) to stop the sync. 😞 

[Dupuytren]

I use a program that uses temp files and repeatedly overwrites them. It will speed things up if I can prevent just this one folder from synching.