Desktop is stuck syncing hundreds of files

[Frank P E.]

Hello – I just turned on one of my laptops that had been powered off for about 2 months. Like all of my computers is connected to my Dropbox account. When the computer started up, Dropbox started to “sync” all the file changes for the past 2 months. It started out with a count of over 3000 files to be downloaded and over a few it was reduced to about 900 files. Now for the past day it seems to be stuck at this 900-file level. I tried to restart the Dropbox app, reinstall it but it still seems stuck.

I am looking for alternatives ---- any suggestions? One thing that I thought would be to map the drive from one of the current computers and copy any file from the current computer that is newer to the current computer dropbox folder  — would this work? Thanks

[Jay]

Hi @Frank P E., thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Can you see which files and folders are trying to sync from the Dropbox folder?

Are they all in the same location, or in random locations?

This will help me to assist further!

[Frank P E.]

thanks for your reply --- I am not sure the best way to answer ---   I created a list of files that don't exist on the target computer that I just turned on  from another computer that is current  -- is a simple text file  would that help? 

from what I can tell from the list  is that there is  around 30 folders in the  dropbox  tree and there are files missing from many of them 

should I post list ? 

[Jay]

Could you try creating a test file on the Dropbox site to see if it syncs to your machine?

[Frank P E.]

I sort of did this.  I got an email with a file that was in the sender's Dropbox --- I opened the link and requested that it be downloaded to my Dropbox  account.  now I did this on a different computer when to the computer in question -- the file was not there 

also, on the effect computer I took some screenshots --- the file was put into the Dropbox screenshot folder,  they were never sent up to the cloud so I did not see them on my other computers 

I just did a clean (re)install --- lets the results of that 

[Frank P E. · Accepted solution]

I tried numerous fixes to speed this up — at one point it seems to be stuck for over an hour stating that it was uploading 921 and downloading 833 files. I turned to Bard (the google ai) for help. It seems that the key to the solution was Dropbox's index process. Bard told me that when Dropbox starts for the first time, it builds a database of all the files in the Dropbox tree. I think since my laptop was powered off for over 8 weeks the database was very outdated and the process to fix was not working very well. So, I took the brute force approach by completely un-install Dropbox including all the leftover from %localappdata% and %appdata%

Now after the installation (told the installer to use the existing Dropbox folder) it started up – I had to re-connect to dropbox.com. Once that was done the app it re-indexed all 85,000 files in the Dropbox folder. Now at this point the up and download counts started to move at a reasonable rate

It seems the key take-a-way here is there needs to be a way have the Dropbox windows app to rebuild the database

[Hannah]

Thanks for the updates here, @Frank P E..

I'm glad to see that you were able to resolve the syncing issue and I'll make sure to pass your feedback along to our team.

If you need anything else, don't hesitate to let us know!