Folders made available offline were not downloaded

[MikeA01730]

Hi,

This weekend I thought I'd test the Dropbox Available Offline feature by storing travel documents there.  On my PC I created a new folder and populated it with some PDFs.  On the Dropbox app on my Pixel (Android) phone I enabled Available Online for the folder and viewed the PDFs in it with no problem.  The next day while in a theater waiting for a show to start I verified that I had no phone connectivity and was not connected to any WiFi.  When I tried to view the folder containing the new folder the new folder was marked with an exclamation point in a yellow circle.  When I entered the folder all the individual PDFs were similarly marked and could not be viewed.  That persisted for some time.  Later when I was outside and had phone coverage but not WiFi connectivity I checked the folder again again and saw that the yellow exclamation points were slowing changing to green phone icons, and that PDFs with the green icon could be viewed.  

Luckily I had paper documents.  If I hadn't carried backups I could have been in trouble.  

I thought that folders marked as Available Online could be accessed anytime with no connectivity, but Dropbox doesn't do that.  Is my understanding correct?  Is phone connectivity required?  If not is it common for this feature to be unreliable or malfunction?  Can this feature be relied on or should I choose a different mechanism?  

Thanks,

Mike

[Terry P.]

Hi Jane,

I'm not sure if it is working 'correctly' in your terms. It's not in mine!

Perhaps the following will help you to give me a definitive answer please.

Two days ago I opened one of the ten 'offline' folders (green arrow icon) in my (up to date) iPad Dropbox app. This large folder called \User Guides had the yellow exclamation icon. I then scrolled down through its sub-folders, looking for those yellow 'Refresh to update' icons. I successively opened these (and any sub-folders within them) and opened (refreshed) all files with the yellow icon. That tedious exercise took me about two hours!

Was that the correct procedure in your view? IOW, do I (a Pro user) have to refresh every single yellow icon file in every single yellow icon folder, at all levels? I would expect that I should to be able to refresh an entire folder automatically, i.e. the program should recursively find and refresh the offline status of all necessary files when the top level yellow icon folder is opened.

This lack of recursive processing is a major issue for me, and I assume for many users with large folders. (\User Guides is 1.1 GB, 4,149 files in 177 folders.)

There is another reason why I think the offline facility is not "... performing as it should." Why did I have to refresh all these files anyway? I had never manually changed them! All had been under \Dropbox for years or many months. And the Dropbox app has been opened many times in the days, weeks and months before that exercise yesterday, on both my PC and my iPad. So they should have been automatically updated.

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Jane]

Thanks for detailing me your thoughts on this discussion @Terry P. & apologies for the tardy reply on my end; I’ve now made sure to include your follow-up observations on the open ticket you have with our team specialist!

[David F.83]

Has this question of sub folders not refreshing when the parent folder is refreshed been resolved?  Its happening to me and  it's incredibly frustrating. 

[Fiona]

Hi @David F.83. Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

I understand some folders are not syncing properly. Let me know more about this. Do you see the updates on the web? Or are the updates showing only on one of your devices? 

Have you tried any steps offered in this discussion? If so, please list the steps you've taken and I will provide the rest. 

Thank you! 

[Troybrant]

This issue remains unsolved, correct. I have had the problem for years. I sync files for offline use. They are accessible offline for a few days and then suddenly I get the yellow exclamation point and they are no longer accessbile until I get internet access again and the "green" down arrow icon replaces the yellow exclamation point, meaning that the files are accessible offline again. 

These are picture files that have remained untouched in folders on Dropbox FOR YEARS.  I don't understand why I keep losing the ability to access them offline.

Help?

[Terry P.]

The Dropbox team's failure to fix this problem over the last few years is nothing short of disgraceful. If anyone in development is actually listening, you should be ashamed.

P.S. Please don't send me yet another banal reply assuring me how much you appreciate my input, etc, etc. Just get the problem escalated to the right manager and fix it.

Terry, UK

[Chris payne]

I have constantly had this issue.  What is really annoying is that Dropbox support has done nothing to answer the same issue for months. I pay a lot for this service and if it doesn't work then I am canceling. We obviously all have the same issue. Files were uploaded and available OFFLINE, they HAVE NOT CHANGED then the entire folder needs reuploading and isn't available.

I only used dropbox and paid because it was easy and it worked offline now I may as well just use my google drive.