Make a certain type of file offline across your Dropbox folders

[rogocomposer]

I have just had the unpleasant experience of software I've been using for years being shut down. I therefore have to go into all my files of that software and batch convert them into a format that can be used in a different software. Unfortunately, while there is a simple batch command in the software, it does not recognize the files in Dropbox when they are offline, so they do not get converted. So, I've had to come up with a workaround, which could be useful, until a better solution comes along:

1. Do a search for all files of that type in your Dropbox folder (including all subfolders)

2. Select the entire list of results and copy them to another temporary folder. This forces Dropbox to make all the copied files available offline.

Now I can run my batch command on the top Dropbox folder and it will convert everything to the correct format for migrating to the new software. I hope this helps someone, but it would be great if offline Dropbox files were treated like regular files in all software programs (this is definitely not the case in the audio production world).

Thanks!

[Jay]

Hi @rogocomposer, thanks for messaging the Community.

Just for clarification, are you asking for a feature to mark specific file types as available offline, or online-only?

Or, are you asking for online-only files to be treated as normal files by other programs on your computer?

This will help me to assist further!

[rogocomposer]

Hi, @Jay , thanks for your response.

There are certain programs that do not recognize online-only files in Dropbox when running Batch commands, for example. And there are also certain online applications/websites that just fail uploads or processing if a file is online-only.

So, yes, since the files are "visible" to the application, it would be great that if any kind of application is trying to access the file, Dropbox immediately treats this the same way as if I were trying to access it directly from the Finder (i.e. that I simply double-click the file and it automatically makes it offline and opens it)

[Hannah]

Thanks for the additional info, @rogocomposer.

I've passed your feedback about this to our team, we really appreciate these details.

Let me know if you need anything else.