201.3.5495 is broken - sync/delete

[Josh L.20]

I did not delete this file. Never.

Yet the latest version re-indexed my whole computer, broke things, and now thinks I deleted this file 400 times.

But some forum "helper professional" will give asinine advice which is irrelevant.

After 13 years, I'm gone. Dropbox is trash. Drew Houston has given the keys to the inmates running the asylum.

[Walter]

Hi there @Josh L.20 - thanks for flagging this with us.

It seems that you're running a beta version  of the app and those are experimental builds which can exhibit some inconsistencies or issue like the ones you mentioned.

Can you try the latest, stable version of the app from this page and let us know if this persists?

Just make sure to toggle off the early releases from your account's settings first. 

Keep us posted please. 

[Josh L.20]

thank you.

I did not select early access - and am unsure why it is enabled.

I turned it off, and requested support disable it on my account.

this was followed up by 500 errors on version history.

Five (now six) major issues this year.

[Hannah]

Hey @Josh L.20, we really appreciate your feedback on this and I'm sorry you've had this experience with the Dropbox desktop app.

Rest assured that your comments have been passed along to our team.

Just to confirm, about the issue on this thread, was it resolved after moving from the beta to the stable version of the app?

[radical_exponent]

Hi @Josh L.20,

Sync engineer here. It appears what's happening in this case is that in the process of saving some edits to the pptx file, the app you're using writes out changes to a new temp file of the same name under a directory next to the affected file, then moves that on top of the real file. This is a very common general pattern that apps use for saving, and Dropbox has code that tries to detect this and treat it as an "edit" rather than a add/delete/move - but it appears this code isn't recognizing this particular pattern. I'm not sure why the corresponding add/move operations are not showing up in the sync history view in the tray. We intentionally do some filtering of noisy events there, which I suspect may be tripping us up.

I think we need to update our code to recognize this temporary file pattern. Would you be able to share what application (and version thereof) that you (or a colleague/friend?) were using to edit that file? That will hopefully help us reproduce and fix the issue.

Thanks!

[Josh L.20]

Application is PowerPoint (Microsoft 365 latest version). 
The Mac (16.87?) version might be triggering the behavior.