Deleted folders keep reappearing

[Adam L.4]

I'm hoping someone can help with this problem. I have been using Dropbox for a few years across a number of devices (2 desktop Macs, a laptop, an iPhone and an iPad). This last week, when I try to delete a folder it reappears a moment later. If I move it into another folder, the same thing happens. I have checked and all my other devices are switched off or not trying to sync while I am doing this. Any advice on how to stop it?

Thanks!

[Zed]

Hey @tsp,

It sounds like the syncing issues you are experiencing could be occuring bacause you may have symlinks in your Dropbox.

Please check this article out, scroll down to the Symlinks section and perfrorm the steps outlined in the article. If you keep experiencing issues, raise a ticket with our support team and they'll be more than happy to investigate and assist!

Thank you!

[AmosMoses]

I have been undertaking he massive re-filing project and found the same issue.  Flders would not stay deleted. 

My solution was to go to the online folder and I found files not showing up on my computer.  These contained illegal characters in their names - ?|: etc.  I renamed each one - using simple names like Amos - and then could delete the folder.  At renaming they all showed up in my synced file. 

This built on some of the advice above - thank you everyone. 

[Rich]

---

AmosMoses wrote:

II found files not showing up on my computer.  These contained illegal characters in their names - ?|: etc.

---

You can use the Bad Files Check to list any files in your account that could cause a syncing problem.

[AmosMoses]

Using the Bad Files Check to check for file that were not syncing revealed other folders I had been unable to delete. Renaming these - online - fixed this issue for me again.

[AmosMoses]

I am sorry to be a nuisance, but i am not seeing how to accept this as a solution on my browsers - I have tried Firefox, Edge and Chrome. I am logged in.

[tsp]

The bad-file-check revealed some .webloc-files with bad characters, e.g. «http-::makezine.com:.webloc». 

There are hundreds of them in my account. Is there a way to rename these automatically somehow in Dropbox?

Also it would be very helpful if the Dropbox client could indicate problems like these with an icon and maybe some more information in the app. Right now if feels like I have absolutely no control over what Dropbox does and silently failing is definitely not a good thing to do.

[AmosMoses]

I agree this is an issue with web files - I re-named a few but know I will have broken them.  I went through everything on-line - just as it seemed more robust.

I do get a message now when trying to name a document with bad characters telling me it is not allowed.  In Windows 10. 

[cappa12434]

I tried both Travel R. and Janet H.4's solutions and they didn't work, or they worked in combination with signing in to my account online and delete the second folder manually, but be careful, I noticed online that the duplicate folder had a folder that the original folder didn't have, maybe there was some glitch or corruption going on there, so I selected that folder inside the duplicate folder I was trying to delete and moved over to the original folder I am trying to keep. After that I deleted the duplicate folder online and now Dropbox works fine! No more duplicate folder keep popping up. So idk if it was a combination of these three solution or what, maybe try my solution deleting the duplicate online (MAKE SURE folders are all same you don't want to lose anything), if that doesn't work try Travel R and Janet H.4's solutions. I think deleting old devices that Janet H.4 suggested should be done anyways.

[tsp]

Would be nice if one of the staff members could say something about this issue.

My main problem was dragging files from the internet browser to my dropbox – mostly .weblog or image-files which contains a character like «|» or «:».

What makes this really bad is that the Dropbox App does not complain. If I sync a folder which contains files with bad characters (which somehow were uploaded to Dropbox anyway) the folder on my Mac looks like it was empty, the green iocn symbolizes that it is synced correctly and that there are no files left to be synced. I deleted a lot of these empty folders from my Dropbox, so I deleted a lot of my files accidentally, because on my computer it showed up as empty, but in reality the folder was not empty.

DROPBOX TEAM: This is serious!!

If it where not for selective syncing and tag-support I would leave Dropbox because of this now.

[tsp]

For others – this seems to work:

- Go to Dropbox Bad Files Check

- Manually rename all reported files on the Dropbox website

- Check again if all errors have been corrected

This is a tedious process when you have thousands of bad files. So prepare for hours of manual renaming 😞