Won't stop indexing on Mac

With pleasure, I announce that I have finally resolved the issue.

After postponing it for weeks and weeks, I ultimately decided to follow the procedure that was recommended to me (to be honest) from the very first day through Dropbox support, and that, after about a month, was suggested to me again, also through Dropbox support. With some of you having tested it, not without complications at times, I finally decided to attempt a solution to the problem.

I will now explain step by step what I did, complete with screenshots, hoping this can be a genuine guide for those who, like I was, are still hesitant.

To begin, I logged out of my Dropbox account through the application preferences. In essence, I performed a logout. At the end of which, a few seconds later, Dropbox itself prompts you to log back in. So far, nothing could be simpler.

Right after logging in, I experienced several moments of uncertainty because I quickly realized that Dropbox had reverted to the old mode, the one for which "online-only" viewing hadn't worked on MacOS Ventura for several months. This surprised and even worried me, but in the meantime, I noticed that Dropbox had already begun indexing the files and synchronizing them.

At a certain point, Dropbox asks you which folders you want to synchronize. Since I remembered that Dropbox could download all the online content, I chose not to synchronize any folders. This made the process very quick. In reality, no files were downloaded, but only the paths were synchronized.

At the same time, Dropbox already starts asking if you want to switch to the new version with File Provider (compatible from a certain version of MacOS Ventura onwards, and also Sonoma). I didn't accept it immediately but waited for the synchronization with the old method to finish. Then I initiated the transition.

Having done this, the indexing and synchronization process started from the beginning. For the second time. I should note that in this second case, the duration was longer than the first time, and I haven't quite figured out why yet. Perhaps because Dropbox remembered which folders I had chosen to view as "online-only" and which as "offline." To be honest, I'm not sure, and I haven't figured it out yet.

So far, about an hour and a half has passed, considering that I have approximately 1.5 TB and 130,000 files on my Dropbox. Finally, the synchronization was completed, and the problem was resolved.

At this point, I began to check the folders, and while doing so, I couldn't help but notice 29 conflict copies. Fortunately, only 29. I will delete them one by one soon. Nothing serious.

However, I realized something not good at all. The files I had added to Dropbox in the last 30 days, which were not synchronized, have disappeared. Apparently lost. Of course, I had backed up all the files. Nevertheless, I noticed that the "previous" Dropbox remains available on the hard disk, but with a different folder name, like "DropBox (date)." So the "lost" files can potentially be recovered from there.

I'm not entirely clear whether I will have to delete this folder manually or if it will delete itself. I'll try to understand by asking Dropbox support again. In any case, it's good to know what happens to avoid "heart attacks" during the process.

As a confirmation of the functionality, I tried adding the "new" files to the newly synchronized Dropbox, and finally, they are added online as well. Everything seems to have returned to normal.

What can I say... it seems to be everything. I'm attaching some useful screenshots. If you have any questions, I'm, of course, available.

Last but not least, I carried out the entire procedure with MacOS Sonoma 14.1.1 and Dropbox 186.4.6207 installed.