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serafinalvarez's avatar
serafinalvarez
Helpful | Level 6
6 years ago

Dropbox stuck syncing, won't let me delete files

Hello,

My Dropbox is taking forever to sync.

Over a month now I started having issues when syncing shared files. I could manually upload and download the latest version of a shared file via browser, but my files wouldn't sync locally. It took me a while to notice it, so I lost hours of work and had a few arguments with work mates, because I wasn't seeing their edits and they weren't seeing mine. When I finally discovered that my local files weren't up to date, I found the Dropbox app was stuck syncing over 2,500,000 files (it probably was because I moved the location of the root folder of a big project containing millions of files, so I guess Dropbox was having difficulties relocating that many files).

Over a month later, I got sick of having to manually download and upload every single file I wanted to edit, so I cancelled my paid account, and moved to a different company. The thing is, I need to use Dropbox for a few (light) things because it's the platform where I share it with a few others , but even though I moved away almost everything it still says it's syncing over 2,200,000 files, and won't let me sync anything because it says my Dropbox is full.

Long story short: After moving away almost all of the files that I had stored on Dropbox I cancelled my Dropbox Pro account, but it is still syncing millions of files and says I'm using over 4000 % of my free storage. I moved away those files locally, but they continue to appear via browser. When trying to delete them via browser, it says they're too many and asks me to do it locally.

What can I do to delete those files from my Dropbox?

Thanks,

Serafin

 

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  • serafinalvarez's avatar
    serafinalvarez
    6 years ago

    Hi Jeff,

    After contacting me by email the engineering team at Dropbox deleted the problematic folder themselves.

    The issue was the huge volume of files in that folder (over 2,500,000). What they said is that the current limitation of the Dropbox desktop application is roughly around 300,000 files. I gave them permisition to remove it, and they did so.

    Best,

    Serafin

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    6 years ago
    Hi Serafin, have you tried deleting the files directly from the Dropbox folder on your machine instead of online?
     
    If this doesn’t work, try deleting the files from the Dropbox site in smaller batches instead of all at once. Once a batch has been deleted, delete another batch, and so on until your account is under quota.
     
    Let me know how it goes!
    • serafinalvarez's avatar
      serafinalvarez
      Helpful | Level 6
      6 years ago

      Hi Jay,

      Thanks a lot for your quick answer.

      I did delete them on my computer, in fact, they aren't there, they're outside of the main Dropbox folder. But the Dropbox app is still syncing, and they do appear online.

      They are many, many files (10 years of work, some of it are Unity projects which contain hundreds of thousands of small files), so it could take days to delete them manually in small batches.

      Is there perhaps a way to "format" my Dropbox to radically delete everything?

      Thanks,

      Serafin

      • Jay's avatar
        Jay
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        6 years ago
        Currently, there isn’t a way to start from a ‘clean slate’ on your Dropbox account.
         
        Since the Dropbox desktop application is constantly syncing, one thing you can try is to unlink the app itself and then delete the files in batches online.
         
        While this can be time consuming, it would prevent the desktop app from syncing deletions as well from its end.
         
        When the account is suitably empty, you can relink your Dropbox desktop application again for it to sync the few files you need.

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