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Re: Dropbox asks if I want to remove a document right after I save it

Dropbox asks if I want to remove a document right after I save it

dimalique
Helpful | Level 6

For the last couple of days, whenever I have saved a Photoshop or an Illustrator document to Dropbox, I have received a pop-up message right afterwards that says:

"Remove "name of document" from your Dropbox account and all devices? If you move this file to $Deleted, it won't be available in Dropbox or on any devices."

I want to know how 'save' is being translated into 'delete'. I don't feel comfortable saving to Dropbox now, because I don't want to lose what I'm working on. Yes, I click on Cancel, but I have no guarantee that this will work every time (after all, I'm saving the documents and I'm getting "do you want to delete"). Does it possibly have anything to do with Dropbox telling me it will take 2 days for my files to sync? (BTW, I have the fastest internet I can buy and have checked the "Don't Limit" bandwidth option on my desktop. On my laptops, I have "Limit to" checked and put in a huge number just so I can get a couple kb Word doc to upload in under a day. I've been fighting this poor upload speed for months, and find it very frustrating since I don't have this difficulty with any other service I subscribe to).

53 Replies 53

kmoppel
New member | Level 2

Hi! Same issue here for several people in our office - when saving a PPT, the message Remove this file to $deleted pops up?

Dropbox version  v90.4.307

Any updates on this why this keeps happening?

Best,

Kristin 

dimalique
Helpful | Level 6

Dropbox has been working with me for a month now. The only thing that seems to work for the intereim, is to turn off sync until you are done editing your document, then turn it back on. 

dimalique

Walter
Dropbox Staff

Thanks for updating the thread with what seems to work for you @dimalique!

For all the others in this thread, if you're still having issues with this, I'd suggest opening up a ticket so our Support team can assist further with account and device specific information. 

In the meantime, you can try pausing sync and resuming it after you're done with your edits while working on 3rd party apps. 

I know it's not much, but I sure hope this helps to some extent. 


Walter
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support


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thejerrybryan
Helpful | Level 5

I do the "pause Dropbox and then resume later" thing. But I still wish someone would answer the question of what does the message about "remove this file?" means? What is Dropbox asking me and why is it asking me? Until relatively recently, this message never appeared and I have been a very happy Dropbox user for many years. So I would like to know what the message means. It shouldn't matter when the message appears or what the filename is. The message has to mean something or it wouldn't be there.

I found it necessary to do the "pause Dropbox and then resume later" thing long before this strange message started appearing. So I think there are two separate issues. This second issue is that Dropbox is trying to sync SQLite databases that are being actively updated, and I don't think Dropbox should be doing that.

Thanks,
Jerry

Здравко
Legendary | Level 20

Hi @thejerrybryan,

You give the answer to your second question. About the first: Didn't my first comment here (second page , at the end) gives enough information to you (for the issue nature, at least)? About the reason: Probably, customer support peoples here don't have any idea too. :laughing:

Walter
Dropbox Staff

Hi all!

I wanted to clear this up a tad and let you know that the message you are seeing is a feature of our desktop application.

This message is a system warning that lets you know an unsupported action was being performed (usually by a 3rd party app) and helps prevent unexpected consequences from this action.

If you have feedback about this feature, you can let me know here and I'll make sure to pass it over to the developer team.


Walter
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support


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thejerrybryan
Helpful | Level 5

Thanks for the update. This response is very helpful, but I think it is still is only a partial answer. What sort of unsupported action might an application be doing?

It sort of sounds like an application is creating a termporary file and then deleting the temporary file or else moving the temporary file to a different folder. That's the same sort of thing I can do as a user from Windows File Explorer. Does the fact that it's being done by an application instead of by me as the user mean that Dropbox can't support the action? And more importantly, how am I as a user supposed to make an informed response to the pop-up message from Dropbox. I still don't under stand what it's asking me and whether I should respond yes or no.

Jerry

dimalique
Helpful | Level 6

From what I've gathered, the way Windows works, is that when you save a file, the old copy is deleted and a new copy is saved in its place. The changes you made and want to save are not added, so to speak. The entire file is deleted, then saved over. What is happening, is that when the file is 'deleted' in preparation for the save, Dropbox thinks you are deleting the file from Dropbox and wants to know if you want to delete it from all your devices. I always click cancel, because I don't want my files deleted, and I feel this is the safest option.

My husband just told me he's getting the same error message when saving output from his synths to Dropbox--but only on Windows. He's never had the error pop up when he's using the Linux side of his devices. I wonder how many Mac users are getting the same error, or if this is just a Windows thing.

samillustration
Explorer | Level 4

Yes! I'm having the exact same problem here also, has started over last couple of days....

Gus3
New member | Level 2

Thanks for the info Walter.

 

I do appreciate this feature.  These are confusing false positives though--we ask a program to save (or it autosaves), and we get a scary notification that something important is being permanently deleted.  I know the intentions are good, but the customer experience is pretty poor in this common use case.  And the solution is equally poor: disable sync, which isn't an option for me since I have editors and IDEs always open, or disable the feature entirely.

 

I don't know what the technical constraints are, but asking Dropbox to trust specific applications would be ideal here, so I can whitelist my editors and IDEs to perform these common actions on my behalf, but still get the notification otherwise.  At the very least, a note about this scenario in the popup window would be helpful so that users could understand that it's often not as scary as it sounds.

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