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
Spotlight Search Doesn't Link to Files in Dropbox in macOS 13 Ventura
After upgrading to macOS Ventura, I was prompted to upgrade to "Dropbox for macOS 12". I proceeded with that, it moved my Dropbox folder to ~/Library/CloudStorage and confirmed all was successful. No...
- That’s the same problem I had. I solved it by doing a complete clean install of dropbox. You may not need to do all of this, but to be safe, in Dropbox settings Selective Sync uncheck all of your folders and wait for them to be removed from your Mac. Once that’s done, unlink your Mac from Dropbox preferences. You should see the Dropbox getting started screen. Quit Dropbox and move the app to the Trash. Remove all dropbox files from ~/Library being careful to look at the path name. Only remove things that are within a Dropbox parent folder. Look in library application support, and library preferences. Empty the Trash. Restart your Mac. Reinstall Dropbox from dropbox.com. Once reinstalled, to make things faster sync only one small folder and wait for the prompt that new Dropbox for macOS 12 is available. You should see the message within a few minutes of reinstalling Dropbox. Allow it to upgrade and migrate your files to the new location. Once that’s done you can then sync all your folders. Let your Mac index itself and the problem should be solved.
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThanks for the additional information Guntis1111 and sorry to hear you're also having issues with this ulba
Following the update where the Dropbox folder was moved to ~/Library/CloudStorage, Spotlight sometimes does not re-index the folder until after it is opened for the first time. You can simply open the Dropbox folder in Finder (it should be under Locations in the left sidebar), allow a little time for indexing to take place then retry the Spotlight search.
Another reason is that the Spotlight index may need to be rebuilt, carry out the steps in this article. Note that the article mentions the Documents folder but you need to use the Dropbox folder instead.
If none of the above steps help, please let us know and we can investigate further.
I've followed your suggestion of reindexing but it doesn't yield any results. The thing is, it does show the folder I searched for in the spotlight results but clicking on the result (to open the folder) does nothing, it won't work. Not sure it's still an indexing issue vs a dropbox bug post update.
Update: Spotlight successfully finds and opens Dropbox files and folders, just like old times. A few days ago, here's what I did:
(1) Unlink Dropbox from my computer
(2) Uninstall Dropbox (which deletes all local-only files)
(3) Reinstall Dropbox, and make all files available offline
(4) Update to the latest version of Dropbox, as prompted.
I'm running OS Ventura. I had the same problem everyone describes in this thread and tried re-indexing and all that--no luck. I have no idea why this suddenly worked.
- Maybe you upgraded to Ventura 13.1?
As far as I remember, I was already running Ventura 13.0.1.
