Stuck "importing photos..."

[James P.45]

My dropbox is set to auto import/upload my iphone photos, which it is doing. But it keeps telling me it's "importing photos..." and the menubar symbol is constantly the camera symbol that usually comes up when its importing. It's like its stuck.

Any help?

System: Macbook Pro, OSX El Capitan.

[John H.182]

Same issues as everyone else.
Stuck on photo sync, icon stays as the "camera" icon.  All other files sync fine.
I've disabled the OSX Photos app, so that's not in the mix.
Versions shown below.

[Rich M.5]

For the record, same problem. I've also messaged support but haven't heard anything back yet. I'll let you know if/when I do. Initially it seemed like that photos were still syncing, but that seems to have stopped.

[Jeremy C.12]

Same problem here, and I don't use the photos app at all.

Everything seems to be syncing OK, just the status in the menu bar is all wrong.

[Rich M.5]

After trying many different possible solutions unsuccessfully (restarts, unlink and relink, complete reinstall, etc.) my problem (and solution) turned out to be similar to Paul P.'s, above.

When I looked at my list of files in the Camera Uploads folder, I realized that a chunk of three days of photos were missing. Everything up to that day was fine, and several days after that were okay before importing halted and began to hang a few days ago.

Unlike Paul, all of my photos had imported into the OS X Photos app, even though they didn't upload to Camera Uploads — so I knew I had a backup, but I couldn't easily identify which one might be corrupt.

What I did was select and delete on my iPhone all the photos that had not loaded to Camera Uploads. There were 68 in all, including a 22 photo accidental "burst" photo. I then went into Trash on my iPhone and restored 4 of them, unplugged my iPhone and plugged it back in, and ... the progress bar on "Importing photos" did advance, and the 4 photos uploaded to Dropbox! (It took more than a minute.)  repeated this, gradually increasing the number to 8 and then 12, unplugging the iPhone and replugging it in each time, and each time they uploaded, quicker than the first time. I did the "burst" last, and it too uploaded. Things seem fine now.

I hope others with this problem find this useful as well. (And Dropbox, in trying to come up with a way to prevent this from happening.)

[Alex C.19]

Clearly the Dropbox Mac client has a flaw in its error-handling code during photo import.

My issue is two files that neither Photos nor Dropbox can handle -- Photos says that one is a .peg file (maybe some transitory version of a .jpeg?) and one is just bizarre (it says "The operation couldn't be completed. (co...)" Yes, Photos also needs better error reporting, but at least errors don't hang it completely). I've tried to use iExplorer and iFunBox to find and delete these files, but I can't even find them.

I suppose I will have to wipe the iPhone and restore from backup, but I'm not even sure that'll work since the corrupt files may be restored as well.

Does anyone from Dropbox even read these forums? Is there a way we can track the progress of this feature-breaking bug?

[Rich M.5]

One more note: I had to repeat the process on a second Mac linked to Dropbox in order to get it, too, to resume importing photos.

[Michael K.109]

"What I did was select and delete on my iPhone all the photos that had not loaded to Camera Uploads...."

If this is what fixes it, I still don't know how to execute this solution, because I don't know how to find these photos. That is, I have hundreds and hundreds of photos in camera uploads and hundreds and hundreds in my iPhone,  and there's no clear method of comparing them to see which photos appear in one place and not the other. It would take days of full-time work, which isn't an option for me. How did you locate the photos?

[John G.139]

If you use the Dropbox App on your phone and sync all your photos then wiping them from your phone shouldn't be an issue. The App doesn't seem to choke on them like the USB upload does. It shouldn't create a duplicate file but if it does, it may tack on a (1) on the end of the file. You could sort by name and scroll through all the dups and deleted them in an afternoon. 

[Rich M.5]

Michael K., I looked through the recent files in the Camera Uploads folder in Dropbox, focusing on the time that it stopped working. I spotted several entire days when I knew I had taken photos for which Camera Uploads didn't have anything. So I deleted all the photos on my iPhone from those days and restored them a few at a time.

So maybe work backward in time from your most recent items in Camera Uploads. (I acknowledge there was some element of luck involved.) 

[Doug S.11]

I am also having this issue (content removed). I am wondering if it has something to with the fact that I have a huge amount of photos in Dropbox (>200,000) and so it simply takes forever to determine if I have duplicates while importing. In any case, it never finishes.