You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Mac osx - strange extra files appearing when downloading files directly.
Just had a strange issue with some files that I directly downloaded from our DB folders. On the website, I went to one of my shared folders from another team member, and clicked on 2 files (illustra...
Thanks Daphne,
Opened up a new browser (Firefox - initial browser was Chrome), and yes same exact issue.
Downloading files from my one user (not shared) also produced the same results.
There was no need to clear browser cache on firefox since it was the first time I've ever visited DB on that browser.
Incognito window produced the same results as well (using different files too).
Thoughts?
Daphne
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThank you for your time Daphne.
With respect though, I don't think this is all entirely accurate, in that I've always downloaded files directly to my system, and while I can't recall the exact date of the last time I did this, I know it would have been within the last month or so - which means it was working just a little while ago with my current OSX 10.11.6. So this tells me that it's something that Dropbox must have changed in how they zip the files.
This will just be a frustrating glitch I guess from now on (until I can upgrade my system at some point.)One additional follow up...
I talked with my co-worker and he confirmed he's using 10.13.6, and he's having the same issue.
- Walter
Hey there JefW - sorry to jump in here; I just wanted to add my two cents on this.
I went through your problem's description and I saw that you mentioned that the files in question had an underscore within their names.
I'm going to take a guess here and say that they probably include a (.) dot too - right?
If I'm correct and that's indeed the case (you're seeing '._' within your files' names), I'll need to inform you that, unfortunately the issue you're seeing is a Mac issue that occurs when copying files with extended attributes metadata into a file system that doesn't support them. Depending on the information stored in the metadata, you may or may not need these files.
These files are called AppleDouble files and more information on how to handle them can be found by searching for: "apple double files"
To avoid this issue if you have your Dropbox folder on an external drive, we recommend ensuring that the drive is formatted in the default file system format for the Operating System that is installed (those would be HFS+ or APFS for Macs).
Formatting drives may cause data to be deleted. Please consult resources from your Operating System's manufacturer (Apple in your case) for steps and recommendations on formatting drives to a different file system. The most common default file systems are NTFS (Windows), HFS (Mac OS X) or ext4 (Linux).
Let us know if this helped please!
I am on Mac 12.3 and I am still experiencing the same issue.
I downloaded a folder from dropbox website (called "Results")The result was a .zip file. Called Results.zip.
I unzipped it.
The result was that I had a folder called Results and the mysterious folder called __MACOSX.
It was plainly visible, not hidden, despite my OS being much later than the one mentioned by the previous author.
The folder __MACOSX contains a subfolder also called Result. It size is much smaller like previously reported.
It's size is 84k whereas the "real" Results folder is 700MK
(Please excuse my rant:This weirdness is a small annoyance. But it is just one more straw on the already broken camel's back. I am locked into Drobpox and am paying a huge price in terms of technical headaches, lost data, and never ending hours of calls and emails with "advanced" technical support).
