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

anram's avatar
anram
Explorer | Level 3
2 years ago

Placeholders not visible on PC

I have several online only folders, but placeholders for the folders do not show up on my laptop PC running windows 10. On a second PC connected to the same Dropbox the placeholders for online files ...
Desktop
  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    2 years ago
    anram wrote:

    I have enabled selective sync, an example is as below:

     However on my PC I only see 

    This would be the expected behavior for Selective Sync. The Selective Sync feature is used to remove the local copy of a folder from your computer. It doesn't leave a place holder behind like marking a file or folder as Online-only would.

     

    If you want local placeholders for your folders, go back into Selective Sync and check the folders so they sync back to your computer. They *should* come back as Online-only which would be a placeholder. If they fully sync back to your computer (green check mark), just right-click one or more folders and select Make online-only.

anram's avatar
anram
Explorer | Level 3

Hi Jay,

Thank you for the response, I have enabled selective sync, an example is as below:

 However on my PC I only see 

 It is interesting that _My Paper doc appears as a placeholder, but my folder names do not

Any thoughts

Thanks

Andrew

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
2 years ago
anram wrote:

I have enabled selective sync, an example is as below:

 However on my PC I only see 

This would be the expected behavior for Selective Sync. The Selective Sync feature is used to remove the local copy of a folder from your computer. It doesn't leave a place holder behind like marking a file or folder as Online-only would.

 

If you want local placeholders for your folders, go back into Selective Sync and check the folders so they sync back to your computer. They *should* come back as Online-only which would be a placeholder. If they fully sync back to your computer (green check mark), just right-click one or more folders and select Make online-only.

  • anram's avatar
    anram
    Explorer | Level 3
    2 years ago

    Thank you. I had misunderstood the difference between Selective Sync and Make Folder Online Only. I now have the functionality I wanted

    • Scratchy's avatar
      Scratchy
      New member | Level 2
      12 months ago
      They certainly have made the explanation as confusing as possible. How about this?

      □ Show ALL folders locally but select
      what's stored ONLINE ONLY

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice 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!