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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.
My old method of searching from the top right search bar brings up the usual...Search: This Mac "Dropbox". When I select Dropbox, no files appear. Before Ventura (or before OS 13), the Search always worked for Dropbox files. Please help. Thank you!
Mark
Super User II
Super User IIThis is the known, and expected, behaviour I'm afraid.
https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes
Thank you for the link.
I am baffled by why it says under the row "Searching through Finder won’t find all content in your Dropbox folder [but] Search using Spotlight isn’t affected."
Unless I am misunderstanding, CMD F or Spotlight bring up the same "Search" box whether from Desktop or Finder. And, once I enter a search word, the results are always the same from Dropbox...nothing (when I clearly have many files). To me, that means Spotlight is affected!
Is there any email (or phone number?) to contact someone in IT at Dropbox instead of putting this burden on good samaritans like yourself to help with these questions and where we can offer suggestions for change?
There are 15 pages hier on this thread. And it is still marked as...SOLVED. Quite funny! I downgraded for the 4th time to the old version, as I was not able to use Dropbox as usual, and I am HAPPY Dropbox user...again..I do not thing I am going to participate on this "kind of" beta-experiments of Dropbox team any more..
You are right, this is the only solution. If you want spotlight to index Dropbox content you can’t update to last version. if you update to the last version, it will move all the files to the Library/Cloudstorage folder and spotlight will stop indexing the files properly. It’s like they are all the same type of file, and if you click them nothing append..
Thank you, Mark, if you also connected (redirected) me to this Forum discussion of 15 pages. This is so helpful.
I have successfully updated Dropbox to the new version (v165.4.4300) with Ventura (13.1) on my 2018 MBP. I made all files available offline, and then excluded the CloudStorage folder from Spotlight, and then did NOT reindex the folder (which is the secret). Then Spotlight works as expected and can find Dropbox files, and also open files from within Spotlight. Did this yesterday and it still works.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey minpi, we definitely appreciate your feedback here, and rest assured that it's passed along to our team.
Thanks for sharing what worked for you, r2xman, hopefully this will help other users as well.
ThePlanner, have you had a chance to try what worked for r2xman?
