Android scratch folder disappeared

[PhantomRick]

Hi, I have been using dropbox for a while to sync audiobooks between my pc & phone (S9+). After a phone restart today, the scratch folder & all files are missing. I tried redownloading the files & dropbox says it ha(green arrow) but I can't find them & still no scratch folder.

I've tried restarting the phone, reinstalling dropbox, checking the sd card, but no go.

Suggestions?

[Здравко]

Hi @PhantomRick,

Have you used "Make available offline" feature on the target files/folders to make sure they won't get off on some circumstances (primarily memory need)? 🤔

Hope this helps.

[PhantomRick]

I've been using dropbox exclusively for my audiobooks for a couple of years now. I have to manually download the files & had the scratch/[user] directory tagged in the audiobook player library. The scratch/[user] directories have disappeared. Files I download / mark for offline within the dropbox app are still saying they have been downloaded (green down arrow), but I can't find them on neither the internal storage nor the sd card.

[Здравко]

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@PhantomRick wrote:
... I have to manually download the files & had the scratch/[user] directory ...

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Hi again @PhantomRick,

I have no idea why you will need to "manually download" anything. 🤷 Dropbox application take care for this, usually, and keeps the content in sync. The "scratch" directory is something for internal use and isn't officially supported! Actual place template (relative to phone common data directory) is: Android/data/com.dropbox.android/files/[user id]/scratch 🧐 which is something different from that what is in your post (order of 'scratch' and '[user]' got swapped, at least)!

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@PhantomRick wrote:
... The scratch/[user] directories have disappeared. ...

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If not pointed explicitly for offline access, on some circumstances, as pointed already, the 'scratch' content could get 'disappeared'!

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@PhantomRick wrote:
... Files I download / mark for offline within the dropbox app are still saying they have been downloaded (green down arrow), but I can't find them on neither the internal storage nor the sd card.

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Here I have to confess, I'm getting confused. Have you 'downloaded' or 'mark for offline' the things? These are two completely different things! Don't mess them. If you have downloaded something, it should be on same place where it have been downloaded, if not removed somehow. Dropbox doesn't anything to do here. If you have marked something for offline access, it should be on the pointed place above. If you can't find it, probably you're looking on wrong place, I'm guessing.

Hope this add enough clarity.

[PhantomRick]

Okay. I don't remember the file structure exactly, because I set the player library a while ago. When I change my audiobooks on the pc & the pc app finishes syncing, I then go to the phone app, select all files & "make available offline", to which the individual files are then one by one download. After all selected files are downloaded, they are then marked with a green down arrow.

I cannot set the folder "Make available offline" because I would need to upgrade for that option & 2Gb is sufficient for my needs.

So far you have criticised the terminology I have used & told me how I doing it wrong. Please let me know how I can make this work so I can find the files locally on my phone & set the directory in my audiobook player to see those files.

This shouldn't be that complicated.

[Здравко]

Android/data/com.dropbox.android/files/[user id]/scratch 🤔

Did you check there or not yet? Check it!

[PhantomRick]

Yes. Both internal & external.

Android/data/com.dropbox.android/files/ is empty on the external sd card, Android/data/com.dropbox.android/ is empty on the internal storage.

There is no [user Id] folder.

[Здравко]

[user id] should be something like 'u235631156', not literally the same.

Anyway... If the 'files' folder is empty, I can't say anything more. Sounds very strange! As a last resort you can try application reinstall.

[PhantomRick]

Tried that. I said that in my original post.

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi @PhantomRick, this is due to a recent change in the Android app, which you can see more details about here.