Smart folders based on tags

[civon]

"Smart Folder" in macOS allows users to view a list of files or folders that share common characteristics. While leaving all the files and folders that match certain criteria at their original location, users can view all of them at a glance in a single place.

This kind of feature is especially suitable for Dropbox for the reason that we store thousands of files on Dropbox and do not leave a copy at our local computer, and we rely on the Dropbox web version to find the file we want. But searching with multiple criteria is never easy on Dropbox.com, and not to mention users need to find a way to save the search result each time.

For example, a user stores his travel photos by year, under each year folder are month folders, and in the month folder are subfolders summarized by person's name. Such as:

1. /Dropbox/Travel/2021/01/Kevin/

2. /Dropbox/Travel/2021/02/Kevin/

3. /Dropbox/Travel/2021/03/Kevin/

...

7. /Dropbox/Travel/2021/07/Kevin/

With "Smart Folder", users can put all the files under the name "Kevin" in the same Smart Folder "Kevin's Travel Photos". Smart folders are only for gathering files and folders with same criteria, and the original files will still be under each "year/month/Kevin" folder.

[Walter]

This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do! 

[Walter]

*Drumroll*

Your idea has been delivered as you should be able to achieve what you had in mind with our naming conventions and/or the automation options feature.

Thanks for sharing your suggestion with us, we'd love to hear any more ideas you have!

[lucy9997]

Having just read & watched video on Smart Folders for Mac, I googled to see if you can save Mac Smart Folders in dropbox.  I cant find the answer but not looking likely from what I can see from a very quick search.  But if anyone else knows - would love to know.  If not, given that filing is not my strong suit anyway, this would be transformative for me in so many ways.  I keep everything in dropbox so pleeeeeeeease Dropbox make this Civon's suggestion happen. 

[Jay]

Hi @lucy9997, Mac OS Smart Folders can't be stored on Dropbox, since they are specific to your local machine. 

However, you might be able to imitate its behavior using the suggestions by my colleague.

[civon]

Thanks @lucy9997 for bringing up this idea that I shared a year ago. I almost forgot this.

Hi @Jay and @Walter , I agree that the naming conventions and automation options features are great, but I'm afraid those are not what I was looking for.

Let me give you another more simple scenario for easier understanding.

Imagine you use your Dropbox to store all your project files, the folders are named after project names. So in your Dropbox you'll have these folders:

1. /Dropbox/Project A/

2. /Dropbox/Project B/

3. /Dropbox/Project C/

etc...

In each project folder, you use a dedicated folder to store the final outcomes of the project, named "Output", and also you have other folders that store other files related to the project.

One day, your boss suddenly asks you to send him all the output files of all past projects. You'll be in a panic for a moment, then you'll calm down and you'll need to go to each of the following output folders, copy and consolidate the files to a new folder elsewhere:

1. /Dropbox/Project A/Output/

2. /Dropbox/Project B/Output/

3. /Dropbox/Project C/Output/

etc...

The problems are:

1. If you only have 3 projects in the Dropbox, you can do it within a minute. But once you have hundreds of these folder, it could take you hours or even a day;

2. Though you can use search bar to look for these "Output" folders, but the search results will also include "Output" folders in other irrelevant folders, and irrelevant files contains the name "Output";

3. Now we're using alternative methods, such as in Windows or Mac to set up automation like "Copy all the files added to 'Output' folder to the 'Consolidated' folder". But the shortcomings are that - (i) the syncing is usually one-way copy 'Output" to "Consolidated', to prevent files from 'Consolidated' overwriting the files in 'Output' when syncing two-way; and that (ii) it only works when the syncing is on a single computer, and when it comes to a team, it'll create file conflicts and at the end nobody knows which one is the real output file.

Now here are what we expect from Dropbox:

1. Let folders have tags. User can tag folders in red, blue, yellow or whatever color. In Dropbox homepage, when I click "Red", I'll see all the folders that I tagged in red. (Of course, it's even better if user can define tag names.)

2. Give the search bar an evolution to return search results from folder pattern. Like the example above, I want the search results to ONLY include all the files in the folders with pattern:

"/Dropbox/Project(*)/Output/"

In this way, it resolves the above problems and has the following advantage:

1. File redundant is a big problem for project management. It means in your Dropbox you have two identical files saved in two different location. But the problem is for a random team member he doesn't know whether these files are the same, so it waste his time to compare them. Using this method, user only needs to care about keeping the files in "Output" file up to date, because he knows he can easily find everything he needs with a quick search;

2. Dropbox is a great tool for team collaboration, and this "Smart folder" (or whatever you call it) bring it to a higher level of great tool. Projects are usually handled by different project teams. For the managers that oversee all project teams, they always have the needs to locate the resources contributed from different teams that shares certain characteristics. The idea is like you have an Excel workbook with a hundred spreadsheets and of each it has two hundred columns and rows, and now you need to select the same columns and rows across spreadsheets to plot an XYZ chart. Now do you think this feature is super-useful?

So yes, the idea has not been "delivered" yet. Let's make it real.

[kkerbel]

Building on your tagging capability...it would be highly useful to allow the creation of a "virtual folder" that I can share a link to that contains folders/files within a folder structure that have been tagged. It can be important to maintain a folder hierarchy but simply filter out files that haven't been tagged. Example:

Original folder structure

• Top level folder
  • tagged file
  • untagged file
    • Sub folder
      • tagged file

Virtual folder would contain...

• Top level folder
  • tagged file
  • Sub folder
    • tagged file

[Walter]

Thank you for sharing your idea.

We have looked into this, but it is not something we are actively working on at this time. 

We regularly review these ideas, and we will keep you updated if this idea moves forward in the future.

[jacknathanrichards]

Adding my support of this idea.

I have a project announcement document saved in every project folder. I have tagged every file with #project_announcement and I would love to create a folder called "Project Announcements" that automatically pulls in files with that #, rather than having to search for the tag every time.

[Walter]

This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do!