Green checkmark with white background explanation

[EC1]

I have seen the official meaning: "A circle with a green border and a green checkmark means that a file was opened (directly or with a third-party application) and synced,"

but what does that mean in contrast to: "A solid green circle with a white checkmark means your file is synced and available offline"?

If I want a set of files to be both available online and offline, shouldn't that result in a solid green icon? Why are most "A circle with a green border and a green checkmark" and only a couple solid green? I thought maybe it had to do with opening the file on the same device or perhaps opening it on another device, but it made no difference to which files are assigned a solid green background versus white. I'm very confused.

[Rich]

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@EC1 wrote:

but what does that mean in contrast to: "A solid green circle with a white checkmark means your file is synced and available offline"?

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Solid green is Available Offline. Files exist on your local drive (and in your account online), and will remain that way so they're available when you're not connected to a network.

White circle with a green outline is Available. Files exist on your local drive (and in your account online), but were previously marked as Online-only. They were made Available when you or an application tried to open the file. Files in this state could be moved back to Online-only if you're low of disk space.

Cloud icon is Online-only. Files are stored in the cloud with a reference file stored locally. Files in this state don't use local drive space. When you open such a file, Dropbox downloads it to your local drive and marks it as Available.

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If I want a set of files to be both available online and offline, shouldn't that result in a solid green icon?

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If you mark them as Available Offline, yes.

[EC1]

Thanks for this information.

For others who may read this later, I was still confused about the info provided, so I uninstalled and reinstalled dropbox for desktop, and I had the same issue. I then decided to right click on a folder that had a circle with a green border and a green checkmark and selected "Dropbox" then "Make available offline." After some time (Dropbox indexing it I presume), it changed to a solid green circle with a white checkmark.

So this resolved my initial issue. Apparently, you have to specifically designate folders you want to exist offline and online with no possibility of them being moved online only if your machine runs out of space.

My only unresolved question is how do I change a folder from solid green circle with a white checkmark (offline and online even if you run out of space on your machine) to green border and a green checkmark (offline and online now, but could be moved to online only if you run out of space on your machine)? 

[Nancy]

@EC1, if a file/folder is already available offline (has the solid green icon), it can only be made online-only after that.

Available files are the result of an online-only file that was opened by you/third-party app, like Rich mentioned above. There’s no option to make an offline file available instead (you can only set it as online-only after that). 

If you right-click on a folder with the green border icon, do you see an option to make it online-only or offline?

[EC1]

For folders with a solid green icon, I do see the option to make them online only. It seems a strange that there is an icon for the green border and a green checkmark (offline and online now, but could be moved to online only if you run out of space on your machine) with no control over designating files/folders as such. 

In any case, my questions are resolved. Thank you.