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Forum Discussion
I want to see all my folders, online or -off, in OSX Finder.
I am moving into a new Mac. Installed the desktop app. I have always had a dropbox folder available in finder where I can easily see everything stored on my DB, and bveen able to right-click and choo...
I'm having basically the same issue. I installed Dropbox on my new Mac. At that time, I selected a subset of the overall folders I needed to actually sync because I didn't want my computer attempting a large sync right then. Now, I need to get some larger folders for a project, but I don't see anywhere I can initiate that from the desktop app. It only sees the folders I synced initially and there's no UI element to let me select others. The UI action is to right-click the items to change the setting, but these files haven't yet been pulled to my local machine yet, so there's nothing to select.
I figured that would be OK, because I could just go to dropbox.com and surely there would be an option there to start syncing those folders locally...but no, there isn't:( I mean, it's fine that the desktop app isn't readily aware of all folders I might have in the cloud, but it's not fine that I can't push those files from the cloud onto my desktop in the dropbox folder structure. I can download files from the web app, but I don't want to download them to an arbitrary location, I want them to be downloaded into my dropbox and to start syncing from this machine when I make changes.
Here's the flow:
After installation of the desktop on my Mac I can see:
dropbox/folder 1/filesAndFolders.stuff
dropbox/folder 2/filesAndFolders.stuff
The folders in question are 2 folders down from my dropbox root, so now, I want to start syncing:
dropbox/folder 3/subfolder 1/filesIWant.stuff
But I can't even see folder 3 in the desktop app to configure it. Even if I could, I don't want everything in folder 3, I just want subfolder 1. My only option is to right-click on the root dropbox folder, sync ALL OF IT, then select everything I DIDN'T WANT (most of the files!) and tell them to sync as "online-only", while dropbox is using all its CPU to sync rather than listen for my commands, so the performance is sluggish. This seems like the same thing the OP was annoyed by. I don't know what else to try other than to fill up my entire disk with dropbox stuff I don't want on this particular machine, then go and push stuff to online-only manually after that pain.
That's not how I want things to work. I want to pull my files out from dropbox on specific machines for specific projects. I don't care whether it's done on the desktop client/finder integration stuff or through dropbox.com webapp, but I need to be able to do that easily or be told the better way to do it.
OK - My previous post was not correct. Even having the root dropbox folder made available offline was not sufficient and didn't pull down new folders, but...
Here's the solution:
Right-click on the dropbox icon on the menu bar, click on your little profile icon (JB, in my case), and click View sync issues:
Then notice the link at the bottom and click "Open Settings":
This brings you to a very suitable interface for selecting exactly what I wanted.
Yes, during the install I guess I was using a feature called "selective sync". That's very neat, but I didn't remember that it was called that, so didn't know to search for it for help. But also, why is such a first class feature in such a terrible place for discoverability? Why isn't it somewhere findable?
I just got a new Mac and was setting up my Dropbox and very quickly identified the exact same concerns you raised in your original post. Thanks so much for posting the solution 🙂
- T_theresa_A
Community Manager
Hey, I'm Theresa, one of the Community Managers here at Dropbox. I'm happy to see that this thread sorted out your issue cwill918 ! I'm curious about how you're using Dropbox I'd really love to hear if you have any tips or tricks, or if you have any questions for us. If you are up for sharing? ✨
Thank you JohnnyB9000 for posting this solution! Lifesaver.
Hey Dropbox, this should not be this difficult to find. Fix it.
Oh my god, you are a lifesaver. THANK YOU. I used selective sync thinking it would only dictate what was saved offline and hadn't realized it meant I wouldn't be able to see the unsynced folders at all in the desktop app. I wanted them *visible* so I could easily find them when I did happen to need them, and then in order to do things like open a .psd file, I had to download it into a NEW place on my computer, instead of the folder where it was already neatly organized. (So I guess the best option is to have everything synced and then go back and mark things online only?)
Anyway, this just saved my day, thank you so much.
