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
Why do these com.dropbox.attributes files show up everywhere?
These files are cluttering up my folders. There seems to be one for every real file that I have. I'd like to delete them.
What are they and where did they come from? And how can I stop them?
Hi,
The issue you're seeing is a Mac issue that occurs when copying files with extended attributes metadata into a file system that doesn't support them.
Depending on the information stored in the metadata, you may or may not need these files.
These files are called AppleDouble files and more information on how to handle them can be found by searching for: "apple double files"
To avoid this issue if you have your Dropbox folder on an external drive, we recommend ensuring that the drive is formatted in the default file system format for the Operating System that is installed.
A quick fix to remove those files: from the website you can search "attributes" in the search bar.
You can select all the results and delete them all together.
Thank you!
I've heard from support and basically these are caused by some operating system adding "extended attributes" to the file. Most likely MAC OS. Extended attributes are things beyond the basic "file creation date" etc. These attributes are not supported on other OS so dropbox creates a little file to store them - at least that's what I think is happening. Although it might be the other way around that MAC is creating the file.
I ran the xattr -cr mydropboxfolder to recursively remove these attributes and then deleted all the extended files, but they came back.
Bottom line is that I don't think dropbox thinks that this is their fault. I think they are wrong and they need to at least make these files hidden.
I'm not happy nor am I impressed with this.
I'd like to get rid of these files either...
It seems they have been introduced in the recent termsAnybody else see these? Quite a few of my folders are completely full of them - basically duplicating all my files with these attributes files.
I'm having exactly the same problem. Folders are filled up with attributes files. Is anybody from the support team willing to answer?
Thanks for your update.
Indeed, it looks like a superficial answer: (1) I never interacted through Dropbox with a MAC OS in the last few days; (2) noone but Dropbox can have added these new files into MY folders.
This looks like a bad bug: I already posted it in the bug's section of Dropbox's support, and anyone with the same problem should do the same; the more messages, the better.
Interesting. Another data point: When I talked to a friend who has shared dropbox folders, only the ones shared with me have this problem. His other ones are fine. There is something going on that doesn't affect everyone.
Once again, exactly the same. Let's see if we find other analogies whcih may help understanding the bug's origin: I'm syncing between different Windows OS (XP, 7, and 8.1) and I have recently installed Dropbox on my Android 4.4.2 smartphone.
Yes the same happens to me. Files are only on the web, they are not copied on my PCs (Windows 7 and 8). But they affect the syncing that now is very slow. I would like to get rid of them. If I try to remove them from the web interface I can only do a search and delete them 100 at time. I have more than 200,000 of them now... A clear answer from Dropbox team about how to deal with this issue would be really useful.
I made a few experiments: it seems that com.dropbox.attributes files are created by my Windows 8.1 workstation whenever a file is moved/created/modified (also by other workstations). Again, no MacOS around. Support?
We may have an answer in this thread: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/communities/public/questions/201278969-Why-does-Dropbox-add-an-xattr-to-my-files-?locale=en-us
Seems like one of the connected devices filesystem may be FAT32.
