Couln't download. Remove incompatible characters from the filename

Hey Arkadiy K., thanks for joining the discussion here.

Those dots in the filenames must be the culprit here. You can have a look at this Help Center article for more information about naming your files in Dropbox. 

Hope this helps!

I've basically given up on this issue as if feels like dropbox support doesn't seem to really understand the issue here. I - among others who have raised this issue - are fully aware of what dropbox recommends to put and not put in file names. I really wish dropbox could stop leading us to that same help article. 

What I want to know why dropbox says there are "sync errors" when there are not. Maybe initially there is an issue - hence the sync error message - but in the end, dropbox DOES upload those **bleep** files. So why is dropbox sending "false" sync errors messages, when eventually there isn't such an issue? 

nomadism 

because there is a sync issue - it may not sync to other devices and/or stop syncing on those devices. There is a reason they are detected and its to stop data loss and corruption not just on your machine but any others connected to it including shares. 

Um, no. Your comment, Mark, indicates that this issue is not fully understood by many people here. 

The screen shot that we - people who are raising these issues - are very specific "sync errors" even though they are simply labelled as a broad "sync error." The error message says that dropbox could not download (or in my case, upload) the file(s), but in the end the files are uploaded / downloaded without errors. 

So the sync error isn't simply saying that there might be a problem, as your comments suggests. The error message specifies what the problem is, but in the end the stated "problem" doesn't occur and actually self-corrects. 

That's why I had given up even raising - Dropbox repeats the same answer without addressing what the real issue is. 

I agree - Dropbox support is not resolving the key issue here.

Walter asks for status and version, mine says 'Your files are up to date', and I am on v189.4.8395 on MacOS Monterey 12.7.2 (old-ish Mac Mini). I have the same problem on my Mac Air which is on Sonoma 14.1.2

1. The dialogue box that lists all the files has what appears to be a link 'View file' but the link does not work, it simply goes to the root file (as stated in previous posts) and does not go to the offending file at all. This needs to be fixed first so we can actually go to the problem file.

2.  Part of the trouble-shooting advice in this thread is to go to your account on the web and search for incompatible characters. However, there does not appear to be any way to show or search for 'incompatible characters'. I have tried searching for (say) '?' but nothing is found in file names. Is there a menu option somewhere?

3 Worst, the dialogue box is not wide enough to show the full file name, so we have no chance of using Finder to locate the offender.  An example of an error on my sync issues pop-up box is  UsrClass.dat(4e7cc44b-d335-....... gtrans.ms   where the dots perhaps represent characters omitted from the error message?  By shortening the file name this way DropBox have compromised my ability to do any trouble shooting whatsoever.

4 Its more than just open files, the error is triggered for files that are closed; having said that they are complex file names so I can see they don't fit the 'mask' but the point is we need tools to find them. 

5  More than anything, we (users) often don't have a choice about file naming, it may be controlled by the software author so just being able to find them and 'fudge' the file name to something that is accepted doesn't really solve the problem either as we (payers of the annual license) actually want it synchronised in its original state.

6 It's hard to prove whether a particular file synchronised or not (as per comment by nomadism) - its a 'Catch-22' problem if you can't find them...

I think this thread will run for a while...

But thank you for reading anyway.

I came here because I have suddenly started to have the same issue. With files I have had in my dropbox for years and years. Suddenly it is not supposed to be legal to have dots ('.') in your filenames? This is perfectly legal on all OS's that I'm aware of, and lots of software create files with such names. I noticed that all the files the app complains about were created on/for a mac, and it looks to me like this may be the case for others as well.

This is some kind of regression and whether it be some blunder by the Dropbox developers or in a recent macOS update, it has to be fixed. Renaming files won't cut it.

Well said!

I'm having the same problem, with 4 .rtfd files. I've got about 100 other .rtfd files on Dropbox that are not causing the same problem.

Hi there Fox2, Galfodo & Simone Attivissimo - thanks for letting us know about this.

Could you please clarify the location of your Dropbox folder as shown in the app's preferences under the Sync tab?

Any additional information or screenshots are more than welcome! 

Thx for your reply!

I'm using a MacBook Pro.

Mine is under HD -> Users -> namesurname folder