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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.
As you can see, when I, for instance, search for "iqi and spinoff", I see the folder in the spotlight search, but if I click on it nothing happens, even though the folder is available offline (second photo). All of the files and folders in my Dropbox are available offline.
Davide
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.
I'm having the same issue. Dropbox Version: v162.2.3802
Just did a complete reindex of Spotlight as well. When clicking on files nothing happens - and also they all have the Dropbox icon instead of their respective file icons.
When holding CMD it shows the path, but upon clicking only the Application Folder opens with the Dropbox application being selected. It makes Spotlight pretty much unusable. Please advise!Dear Support,
I am having the same issue just like everyone else. I have been Dropbox Premium user for the last decade and this upgrade has totally screwed dropbox and Seriously, it is worse than One Drive and Google Drive.
Please see my uploaded image, all the folders now is Dropbox icon. When i click it, it does nothing.
Please fix this Dropbox!
Like everybody here, I cant use spotlight anymore with my dropbox, and it's killing me. Same, 10 years with Dropbox, and now I have to reconsider my all company organization because of that shi... update. What the hell Dropbox???? Please do something!!!!! Move the file out of "library/cloudstorage", go back to the previous system!!!
Well described. Dropbox became useless, not Spotlight though..... Let's blame it to the right culprit. What pisses me off is that the upgrade and move to Library was mandatory and irreversible.
It is reversible. Just sign out, deinstall, download, install again and sync. And do not update again! There is still possible to use Dropbox in a way we used to...
Exactly same problem
- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hi everyone! Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
There are a few reasons you might be experiencing issues with searching for files within Dropbox using Spotlight.
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.
Could you try opening the Dropbox folder in Finder (it should be under Locations in the left sidebar), and then allow a little time for indexing to take place before retrying Spotlight search?Another reason is that the Spotlight index may need to be rebuilt, carry out the steps in this article. Keep in mind 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 me know and we can take another look.
Thank you!
Megan, thanks for skirting the real problem. Don't you think 4 weeks is enough to reindex a folder? You totally ruined Dropobx and trampled with my trust. What was it mandatory and irreversible, to start with. I would not even like an answer. I am searching for a better application.
What I do not really understand - there is no clear statement from Dropbox Team side - something like - please do not update, there is a buggy update, it will brake your system, we work on that hardly, we will inform you asap. Instead of that each new person coming to this forum with the same issue will be asked to experiment, reindex etc..I did it 4 times, and?
Dear Dropbox team, what do you expect? Do you really believe if it doesn't work on 20 machines, will it work on 21th? Please deactivate this update notification to avoid a further frustration of your customers. And once really solved, please notify your users again.
I have tried re-indexing but Search is still not working. Can you please make the previous version of Dropbox available to MacOS users until such time as this is fixed? Thanks!
- Re-indexing won’t work (some people falsely believe this works)
Dropbox themselves published that it won’t work and yet their staff on these forums deceive us into attempting these futile attempts to resolve
Just fix the software Dropbox or give us the old version it works fine, not sure why you changed it you’ve created many more problems to a solution nobody asked for
The problem is recurring for me now. I tried reindexing the dropbox folder as you suggested Megan and now nothing works at all. Back to where I started.
I've tried every solution 3+ times and nothing works. It's ridiculous that you can't use finder search with Dropbox. I'm going to have to go back to Google Drive. At least search works.
Thank you for recommending Google Drive. If I am also unable to get the Search to work, I will look into this.
- Nancy
jasonyohon, if you still want to, I can log a ticket for you, so that we can investigate this further.
Also, ThePlanner, if you wish to reach out to our support team directly, you can see all support options for your plan here.
Thank you for your reply, but please know that the Contact Us just took me back to the Community Forum and Chat Bot (which has zero understanding of my concern). If this Search issue cannot be addressed by a member of the IT at Dropbox or if no Good Samaritan on the Forum has found a workaround, then I will also need to move my friends and family to another service. This is such a shame because Dropbox has been a reliable tool for our friends and family network since Dropbox began!
Approach dsnidey's suggested fix with caution!! While I appreciated the suggestion, dsnidey's proposed fix not only burned many hours of my time but made my Dropbox situation much worse, at least with build v166.4.2920, resulting in the following additional issues (on top of the Spotlight Search problem):
- Many "Conflicted" copies of empty folders and files
- Getting stuck in sync that never resolved
- Subfolders of Selective Sync folders not syncing
- "Cannot communicate with helper" error messages
I'd recommend NOT following this procedure proposed by dsnidey, although it's partially helpful. After speaking with Dropbox customer service, they suggested instead simply installing the latest stable version.
I followed this slightly revised sequence of these steps, which fixed everything for me:
- Click on your Dropbox MacOS app menu bar (not Dock) icon-->click on your profile icon-->go to Preferences.
- Under Sync, go to "Select folders" then uncheck all folders synced to your Mac. Doing this will remove them from your Mac and leave them online ONLY. You'll need to wait a while (potentially hours) for this removal to finish.
- Go to your former /Users/Username/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox folder to make sure all files have been removed
- Go to Dropbox MacOS app Preferences-->Account-->Sign out of account. This unlinks your Mac from your Dropbox account. You should see the Dropbox getting started screen.
- Quit Dropbox and move the app to Trash.
- I used a 3rd party AppCleaner removal tool to clear out all the Dropbox files from my root and user /Library folders, but you can also do this manually.
- Delete Dropbox folder & files from the /Users/Username/Library/ folder
- Delete Dropbox folder & files from the /Library/ folder
- I used a 3rd party AppCleaner removal tool to clear out all the Dropbox files from my root and user /Library folders, but you can also do this manually.
- Restart your Mac.
- Reinstall Dropbox by going to the Latest Stable Builds page, finding the latest version released by clientreleases and directly downloading the appropriate offline Installer for your MacOS.
- After you reinstall and log in with your account, you can go back to and recheck your folders under Sync that you want to have both offline & online. The sync process could take a very long time depending on the size of your files and internet speed.
I struggled with Spotlight issues after updating to the latest Dropbox MacOS release, but following these steps made Spotlight search work again for me, and all files synced as they should, including all subfolders. Although it took many hours for all my files to resync, everything was 100% back up and running. I hope this works for you too. Good luck!
IMPORTANT- if you get a prompt saying Dropbox is going to migrate your files to a new folder, the Dropbox advisor I spoke with advised NOT to do this. Otherwise, you may be back to square one.
I confirm - this is THE only solution right now until Dropbox fix this
discovered prity interesting option today:)
You can use it with Dropbox as well without using Dropbox software at all.
This [the post marked as solution] has not resolved the issue.
Problem persists; seeing the files in the list of results, with a Finder icon, and unable to open them... frustrating!I suppose using the 'old' Dropbox (not updating) could do it, but that does not feel right.
Has anyone else successfully tried the mentioned 'solution'? To me, this thread is still unresolved!
- It is unresolved. There is no solution. Use old Dropbox App
Exrtremely risky! I will have to take the time to copy all files to an external disk. Not when workin 70 hours a week. Spoiled dropbox, I really despise when "big bother" mandates me to do things I don't want "for my own safety". Don't thread on me Dropbox, I will search for a better app, after being one of the early adoptes....
I have tried this solution but it did not work. Files on Dropbox won't open from spotlight. The screenshot shows that also the icon of the pdf file I am trying to open is not ok.
I am running Dropbox v166.4.2920 on Ventura 13.1 .
This is very much annoying because I cannot work efficiently as before. Hope for a quick fix.
Add Cloud Storage folder to System settings - Siri and Spotlight - Privacy, this works fine for me.
(sorry my system is Hungarian)
I tested it on my Intel based Mac Mini and M1 MacBook Pro
Folder path:
~/Library/CloudStorage
But, I guess, you are still not able to show/locate files directly from Spotlight in Finder using Commando+Enter? If it is a case, this is still not a fix. At least for my needs..
this solution does not work - I had to uninstall, remove everything, then fresh install and this time I am ignoring the update message in my dropbox dropdown menu - voila! spotlight will work, search works properly, you can select an external drive too, etc.
- This solution does not work. After uninstalling everything Dropbox already installs on the new Mac default folder.
I just tried your solution, but it didn't work.
I'm running Ventura 13.1 and Dropbox 163.4.5456
I did a fresh install but the issue persist: spotlight find files in dropbox folder but cannot open it.
