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Huxley_D's avatar
Huxley_D
Explorer | Level 4
10 months ago

Dropbox folder on macOS suddenly missing tons of folders which are visible on other machines + web

Hi all,

 

Last night I used the Dropbox website to upload a bunch of files and folders from an old / failing external drive. I used the website rather than my local folders because the total size of the content I wanted to upload exceeded the amount of free space on my MacBook's internal drive (where my Dropbox folder lives), so copying everything into the Dropbox folder and waiting for a sync wasn't going to work.

 

The files I uploaded via the web worked fine, and I can see everything I uploaded along with all my older / previously-uploaded files and several dozen folders on my other computers, and on the Dropbox website. However, now when I look in my MacBook's Dropbox folder, it shows a bunch of files and only 4 folders - a huge number of folders are simply gone now. The Dropbox app on my Mac keeps insisting that it is fully synced and up to date, and nothing changed after a reboot.

 

How do I get my folders back?!

Restore
  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    10 months ago

    Hey Huxley_D, sorry to jump in here.

     

    This is strange behavior indeed, but we'll get to the bottom of this.

     

    Can you check your selective sync settings, to see if you can see all your folders there and whether they are selected or unselected?

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    10 months ago

    HI there Huxley_D - sorry to hear about this.

     

    Could you have a look at your backups page and let me know if you can find your folders there?

     

    Also, what can you find in your events page about this?

     

    Keep us posted!

    • Huxley_D's avatar
      Huxley_D
      Explorer | Level 4
      10 months ago

      Hi Walter, thanks for jumping in!

       

      1. The Backup page shows nothing - 0 files, 0 bytes of data

      2. The Events page shows thousands and thousands of entries, because some of the folders I've uploaded in the past ~24 hours (i.e., web archives) contain a whole lot of small files nested in subfolders

       

      I'm scrolling and scrolling through the Events, but all I can see are entry after entry for "you added XX files" - nothing has been deleted, which is good! 

       

      Huxley

      • Hannah's avatar
        Hannah
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        10 months ago

        Hey Huxley_D, sorry to jump in here.

         

        This is strange behavior indeed, but we'll get to the bottom of this.

         

        Can you check your selective sync settings, to see if you can see all your folders there and whether they are selected or unselected?

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