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
Desktop Dropbox Sync Quit Loop
I recently reorganized a large number of files in my dropbox. I wasn't thinking of the impact on syncing--just of making my own search easier. Since then, my Dropbox app has been quitting every minute or so. When I click the "relaunch" prompt, it starts again. But it's always stuck at the same number of files it's trying to sync, so it's caught in some sort of loop.
I'm terrified to try to fully delete and reinstall because many of my files are now not on my laptop--they're hosted at Dropbox, and I'm afraid I'll lose access to them (or they won't show up on my laptop) because the new app isn't syncing them.
Any suggestions?
Hello Barclay
thanks for reaching out to the Community. Yes, that would be a scary situation to be in. But if you are confident that you have all files on your computer inside your Dropbox folder and the rest of the files on Dropbox.com, you are assured that you will eventually have all your files synced. You can go to the web interface and make sure your files are there and also rest of the files should be in your literal Dropbox folder. You will need to reinstall Dropbox. Try reinstalling and if that still gives you an error, you may have to do an advanced install.
Do what this Help Center Article https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall. says to do
- Chris_J
Super User
Hello Barclay
thanks for reaching out to the Community. Yes, that would be a scary situation to be in. But if you are confident that you have all files on your computer inside your Dropbox folder and the rest of the files on Dropbox.com, you are assured that you will eventually have all your files synced. You can go to the web interface and make sure your files are there and also rest of the files should be in your literal Dropbox folder. You will need to reinstall Dropbox. Try reinstalling and if that still gives you an error, you may have to do an advanced install.
Do what this Help Center Article https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall. says to do
Thank you! That solved it. I was pretty nervous about opening the terminal but the instructions were clear and it worked. The thing I was really worried about was that the instructions said something along the lines of "if your Dropbox is not installed in the default location..." I've been using dropbox for about ten years and had absolutely no idea whether my settings were default. Lucky guess: they were. Would have been super helpful to know what that default was--or how to check it in those instructions.
- Chris_J
FYI, they are always installed in the Users directory, whether you using a Mac or Windows. (I'm not sure on Linux) Unless one changes it for some reason. The terminal prompts will just add a user to the folder if not used by Dropbox, it would not be dramatically harmful if done wrong.
Glad its working for you now
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey Barclay, thanks for letting us know about this.
When the app quits, is it giving you some sort of error message?
And what's the exact status of the app, when you hover over the Dropbox icon in your system tray/menu bar?
Let me know and we'll go from there.
Thank you, Hannah! It seems to be sorted out.....
