Files stuck syncing but queue shows nothing

[Tara88]

Hello! About three weeks ago, I got a refurbished Macbook Air and transferred all the content from my old Macbook Pro over using Time Machine. Relinked my work and personal Dropboxes from the new computer, etc. Everything is working great EXCEPT my Dropbox has been trying to sync the last 679 files for the entire three weeks. But nothing at all shows up in my "sync queue"—it just says "checking for updates" perpetually.

The hangup does not appear to be affecting UPLOAD at all—whenever I add something to the Air and then compare my folders on the Air with the ones on my iMac, the folders I added to the Air are reflected in the iMac. However, it's totally suspending the DOWNLOAD function to the Air. Files that originate on the iMac are making it into the cloud but are never being downloaded by the Air.

So that inability to pull files down is super annoying, and also the trying to sync forever thing eats my RAM and CPU.

I've tried quitting Dropbox app and restarting, and also tried restarting the computer, but I'm not sure what other steps I should try. Any help greatly appreciated!

[Daphne]

Hi @Tara88, thanks for reaching out to us here!

As a first step, can you try the steps below to see if that does the trick for the stuck syncing?

1. Click the Dropbox icon in your menu bar.
2. Click the profile pic/initials icon in the top right of the window.
3. Choose "Preferences..."
4. Go to the "Account" tab.
5. While holding the Option/Alt key, click "Fix Permissions".

Please also follow the steps again and instead click "Fix Hardlinks". The app might need to sync for a while after doing this, so please just keep an eye out for any progress.

If the sync is still stuck, let me know which version of the desktop app you have installed.

Keep me posted!

[Tara88]

Hi Daphne,

As far as I can tell, doing both of the steps that you instructed led to the following small changes:

1. The number of syncing files was 674 instead of 679

2. The syncing data amount changed (it used to be something counted in MB but I forget the exact number, and now it is 237 kb)

But it's still getting stuck syncing, and the sync queue is still stuck on "checking for updates." 

The version of Dropbox I have running is 104.4.175 and my computer has Mac OS Catalina 10.15.6.

VERY INTERESTINGLY, when I hovered over the icon to check the version number, I was able to see the name of a file that was supposedly uploading, and I found the file and saw that there was another one in the same folder with the little "syncing" icon next to it. Out of curiosity about what would happen, I renamed both of those files and then they synced just fine, and the number went down to 672, where it has hung ever since. But I cannot see the names of these 672 because all it says when I hover is "Downloading 672 files (LAN)..." and I think that even if I did know the names of them, I couldn't change it from this computer if they hadn't downloaded yet. Any further ideas?

I might be able to isolate the folder that they're in by trial and error, but it seems like there must be a better solution!

[Tara88]

The plot thickens: I did end up narrowing it down by trial and error, and it seems that there's a locked folder that a colleague shared with me that has been trying to sync since he shared it, which roughly coincided with the date of acquiring my new computer. I removed myself from the shared list, but instead of deleting the folder for me, that seems to have spawned a copy of it that only I am a member of, which I cannot delete from my list because it's locked and I don't have permissions. It's deleted in the browser view, but the desktop app thinks it's still there. My colleague says that I successfully removed myself from it on his end and suggested that maybe I just need to reinstall Dropbox. So I am going to try that and see what happens.

[Tara88]

All right, so, I uninstalled Dropbox, deleted it from the trash, and restarted the computer. But the moment I did a fresh reinstall and linked the account, the stupid folder reappeared. I am at my wits' end. How do I delete a locked "ghost" folder that won't stop syncing?

[Tara88 · Accepted solution]

So I finally fixed it, if anyone else has the same issue. I unsynced every single other folder so that none of them appeared locally anymore except the ghost folder, and then I just deleted the ENTIRE DROPBOX FOLDER that included the ghost folder and emptied the trash. This automatically unlinked my Dropbox account, and when I relinked it again, the ghost folder was gone. I was then able to proceed with re-syncing all my other files back to my local folder.

[tytyj]

I don't have the "fix permissions" option on my account page. Can you help?

[Jay]

Hi @tytyj, could you confirm that you're in the Dropbox desktop application, and not the website, when trying to view those options?

[jackwaller30]

I also don't have the "fix permissions" option on my account page. I'm looking at this on my desktop applications. You can see from the screengrab below that it isn't there. I've also included a screen grab from my sync queue that never shows the files and just seems to get stuck.

[Removed as per Community Guidelines]

[Jay]

Hi @jackwaller30, try pressing Alt+H while in the account preferences in the desktop app to see the previous options, and then let me know if this helps!