A user's desktop app creates conflicted copies, whenever other team members create new files

[ekmaster23]

We have a certain team member that whenever their laptop is turned on and dropbox is running. ANY new files created by any OTHER members of our team will become conflicted by the Laptop users account. We have tried uninstalling norton from their laptop and tried to ensure that all cloud storage options are logged out of on their laptop.

For years we all worked out of dropbox with our accounts with no issue, between windows and mac machines. But since they got their new laptop back in october it has been a constant headache.

I believe there may be some permission or app or setting that is causing any new file we make on dropbox, to be "accessed" by their machine for some reason or another. Wether it be virus scanning, One drive, or something else. The issue is. I've made sure all of those services are off.

Thoughts? Has anyone experienced this?

[Hannah]

Hey @ekmaster23, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

It's a pretty strange issue, indeed.

These third party services, are they simply turned off? Have you tried temporarily removing them completely, to see if that makes any difference?

Is this team member using the most recent version of the Dropbox app and what's the sync status, when they hover over the Dropbox icon?

Let me know and we'll go from there.

[ekmaster23]

Hey,

I have uninstalled norton, and any other types of conflicting programs I could imagine.

Yes I had them reinstall dropbox from scratch. The sync status says fine but I will double check. The problem is that we cant really spend much time with them on their laptop to trouble shoot cause it slowly messes up our entire teams folders. So we basically have to hope we can find it before we launch dropbox. If that makes sense?

The weirdest part is they are not accessing the files we are sharing. We are a music studio and each working on independent projects. it's more so like there might be some auto backup software running on a root level thats immediately downloading the file and freezing it.

I've tried having him set everything to online only as well but it still persists.

[Nancy]

Sorry for jumping in, @ekmaster23. 

Can you take a look at this Help Center article and let me know if it helps narrow down the issue? It outlines all possible reasons why this may be happening.

[ekmaster23]

None of those apply. As I said before. The colleagues all work on separate projects. There is no overlap. Not even using the same software or folders. We have no issues with any computers/cross compatibility/or anything else. But as soon as the Laptop user turns on his laptop and fires up dropbox any NEW files that are created by OTHER users (can be hundreds and hour due to the type of work) will result in conflicted files. All the files created by LAPTOP user are fine. But any files made on any other machine become conflicted multiple times. Can result in 10-15 of the same "conflicted" file.

[Nancy]

Hmm I see. Since you mention this is mostly happening for files they don’t access (and which I’m assuming they don’t need to have synced locally), I’d recommend removing them from their Dropbox app with selective sync. 

This won’t affect the files at all; they’ll be visible online but not locally on the computer, so this issue shouldn’t persist after that. 

Let me know how it goes.

[ekmaster23]

Thats not a viable solution because they have to have access to our main directory that holds everything and we have thousands of projects. I just want to know why it was never and issue until they got a new windows laptop. Hoping someone just has an "oh this will fix it" idea