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MelLRBJ's avatar
MelLRBJ
New member | Level 2
6 years ago

Is there a way to cancel the online only option?

I use the dropbox business for work purposes, since the online only come up recently

I have been having nightmares. I need all the files to be 'locally' instead of 'online only' since I may need to access old files while on the road with no internet connection. I also need to back up the data or transfer via external hard disk to colleagues that have no access to dropbox, but this only only feature make the file can not be transferred if not yet downloaded. I have to CLICK every file to download then do the transfer. I have re-installed the dropbox and chose 'locally' but still after a week it went back to online only. In the preferences also I select 'local' on the "save hard drive space'.

  • Celeste's avatar
    Celeste
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hi MelLRBJ, welcome to the Community! 

    In order to keep your content synced locally, you can right-click and set it to 'Local' from the Dropbox folder as you mentioned. 

    From your description it sounds like the 'Save hard drive space automatically' feature in the Sync settings is activated, which makes content you have not accessed in a while automatically sync to online-only. You can deactivate this from the Sync settings in the Preferences directly, though.

    Equally, from the same tab, you can choose new content (or content added to the web) to also automatically sync locally. 

    If both of the settings are deactivated and your content still syncs to online instead of local, do make sure you have the latest version of the desktop app

    You can also review the app's syncing icons, here, for reference. 

    Let me know if this helps or if the issue persists - thanks!