You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

blueeyes2's avatar
blueeyes2
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

Lightroom and Dropbox Pro Nightmare

I'm a photographer and was hoping that upgrading to Dropbox Pro would help my workflow but it's been a nightmare and I'm wondering if anyone can help.  I am using lightroom and I have one catalogue ...
Download
Dropbox Basic
Sync
  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    7 years ago
    Hi there blueeyes2!
     
    Initially, please note that many processes on your computer may look at files that you may have not manually opened and, in order to fulfill these requests, Dropbox syncs the files. Such examples include:
    • Backup services.
    • Antivirus.
    • Recently used file lists.
    • Third party applications that monitor files in general. 
    Please note that if there are apps that constantly look at your files, your files may come back following the behavior described above if you didn't recall them manually. 
     
    If this is the case, I'd kindly recommend to test this out by temporarily quitting or disabling relevant apps until you see that the issue no longer occurs. If you do, it could be that the last app that you closed may be the one performing this action.
     
    However, please remember that when you set a file to be online-only, only information about the file, such as the name, the location, and the date that the file was updated, is downloaded. You can find more info about this here. 
     
    Having said that, from what you describe in your post, it sounds like the third-party app you use requires access to these files you set to be online-only so as to preview them, hence why they could be downloaded as local. 
     
    In any case, let me know what you find! :grinning:
Lusil's avatar
Lusil
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
Hi there blueeyes2!
 
Initially, please note that many processes on your computer may look at files that you may have not manually opened and, in order to fulfill these requests, Dropbox syncs the files. Such examples include:
  • Backup services.
  • Antivirus.
  • Recently used file lists.
  • Third party applications that monitor files in general. 
Please note that if there are apps that constantly look at your files, your files may come back following the behavior described above if you didn't recall them manually. 
 
If this is the case, I'd kindly recommend to test this out by temporarily quitting or disabling relevant apps until you see that the issue no longer occurs. If you do, it could be that the last app that you closed may be the one performing this action.
 
However, please remember that when you set a file to be online-only, only information about the file, such as the name, the location, and the date that the file was updated, is downloaded. You can find more info about this here. 
 
Having said that, from what you describe in your post, it sounds like the third-party app you use requires access to these files you set to be online-only so as to preview them, hence why they could be downloaded as local. 
 
In any case, let me know what you find! :grinning:
blueeyes2's avatar
blueeyes2
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

Thanks Lusil.  I am sure what you are describing is true, Lightroom is calling those files as previews when I scroll but the issue now is that when I go in to my Mac storage settings to see what is taking up so much space, there are files listed from 2016 that I am not using and are marked as online.  Now my synching has stopped because my hard drive is full so I can't tell it to stop syncing these files from 2016. 

I have no idea how to fix it other than figure out how to uninstall and revert back to the non pro version because then at least when I unsynched a file it remained unsynched and didn't cause this issue.

About View, download, and export

Need support with viewing, downloading, and exporting files and folders from your Dropbox account? Find help from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!