Cannot Delete Folder in Dropbox

[Island S.]

I have selected 'Delete' on selected folder, it disappears then reappears with the same exact 'date modified' date stamp within 5 seconds after I select 'Delete.' I have tried about 10x and so has my friend who shares the same Dropbox. Looked at security permission and I have all activated.

Thank you for any help.

[Bruce F.4]

Hi All. I've had the same problem for a while and somehow today I think I've cracked it... though not exactly how as it was totally a case of trial and error. I started by logging out of Dropbox on all devices I thought might be connected including the PC I'm using now as well as a couple of iPads.

I'm not sure it's an issue with Dropbox itself as I found some settings in the "Auto-play" part of the Control Panel of my PC which I think may have been causing the error. I'm running Windows 7 - to open the Control Panel, click on the Start Button on the bottom LHS of the screen, Control Panel will be on the LHS of the menu that pops up. Click on Control Panel. When the Control Panel open up, click in the Search window at the top RHS of the screen and type "auto". A list of results will appear, one of which should be AutoPlay. Click on AutoPlay. In this screen you will see a a large number of items which can be configured. When I opened this screen it had "Import Photos and Videos using Dropbox" selected for a lot of the configuration items. For each one that had this, I changed it to "Ask me everytime". Once you've updated all the "... Dropbox" items, then click on the Save button. Once I did that I opened Windows Explorer, went to the Dropbox folder and deleted all the folders that I didn't want. I then logged back into Dropbox on my PC only. Can't remember if the folders had already disappeared, but if they hadn't I also deleted them within Dropbox. Then I started typing this comment... and the folder still hasn't come back! Hope this helps.

[Jennifer R.16]

This is my experience - not sure if it will be relevant to others. I've been trying to delete some Dropbox files today too. Finally I realised that Dropbox was stuck in a sync with 4 files apparently unrelated to the ones I was trying to delete. It was showing sync time as 2 hours. I paused the syncing on both my computers (while turning off other devices which use the Dropbox App) and deleted the files I wanted to delete both on the Dropbox website and on my computers. I emptied the Trash too. (Yes I know this is probably a bit paranoid) Then I switched back on the syncing which completed in seconds and my deleted files stayed deleted. I use a Mac, and the MP3 files I was trying to delete had been sent to me via an NTFS formatted USB stick by a Windows user.

[Bruce F.4]

Thanks Jennifer R. You've reminded me that I also paused the synch which was also taking a couple of hours. I think the long synch was because I tried to drop ALL the photos on my PC into Dropbox and they took up more space than the free version allows. Once I had deleted the folders as per my previous comments I re-started the synch.

[Stephen M.16]

I had the same problem with a reappearing folder - I could not delete it from my PC. However, after reading comments here about other devices causing a conflict, I tried deleting the folder from my tablet and it worked!

[Eric C.7]

I have the same problem and it is annoying.  

[Marius A.]

I have the same problem. I suspect a mobile device might be the culprit, but the device is not listed on the site!

[Savash K.]

I have the same Problem its driving me crazy any real fix for this?

[Bill D.13]

Need this fixed! When??

[Boris W.2]

Hi all, Happy New Year!

I got the same problem too.

I use my Android to delete the folder "shellext ". <-- Right, u see space include the name. I think that was the problem.

I think u can use any PC or Smartphone to delete it but not tested! First try with Android was successful.