Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?

Hey peeps, thanks for joining the discussion!

Shawn B.14, I've reached out to your email to have a better look into this. Please just check your inbox when you have a moment and we'll take it from there.

After trying the "Fix..." options through the desktop app, it can take some time for the changes to apply and then syncing to progress lucaspinhro. This can also depend on the amount of data that you have within your Dropbox folder.

If you're not seeing progress after some time, can you just check for me that your bandwidth settings aren't limited?

If you haven't already, user2891 can you try the steps I mentioned here?

Keep me posted - thanks!

I have exactly the same problem also, 3 desktops and 1 notebook. For some unkonw reason the notebook didnt have this problem, but that one is not fully synced.

The other three dekstops has/had the same problems. Two of them now is working ok, but my main PC is still stuck in sync..

The other two took quite a while to get out of sync, couple hours. My main has 600Gb of data. And this is the only one that is fully synced.

I was on chat with tech, they wanted me to uninstall the client but uninstall also got stuck. Now I am waiting for an email from them.

DB built 88.4.172

Hey Daphne and guys!

Just letting you know that my problem was solved a short time after i've tried the "fix..." options.

Thanks for your support!

Same problem here. Last night support chat couldn't solve it either. Two weeks ago something similar happened. This time, it is just "Syncing..." No numbers, no indexing.

Such a shame, Dropbox used to be a reliable service. If it is not solved this weekend I'm just going to cancel my subscription.

Just leave it there it will sort itself out. My main PC took a day to sync it up (160k+ files, 570 GB).  It didnt display any information during sync and seemed like it stuck. There wasn't any activity during sync, no uploads or downloads. After sync was completed all new/modified files were downloaded/uploaded.

Thanks, it's good to know that information. 

I would still consider this a bug because there should be more information other than 'Sync...' to tell people to wait. I also have roughly 600GB data to sync and clearly we can't upload new files during this time so trusting that a simple 'Sync...' message is going to work after 24+ hours of waiting needs addressing.

Or at least tech support inform us that the new update has in fact caused this and we should expect to wait a long time.

I think this sync is more of a server side update. Though a note whould have been nice from DB to let us know that you wont have full access/controll of your DB during this update. Actually it took more then a day for me, it was more like day and a half, but everything is good now.

Hi @Daphne

I did all your recomendations, but the problem of re-syncing all files (even older files) continues.

What else can I try?

Tks.

One more person who have same problem. I worry about data loss.

Same problem here on a headless Ubuntu 18.04 server.. I have 1 TB of dropbox data and since the most recent update the Dropbox client eats 100% CPU (one core) and never finishes syncing no matter what I try.

Everyone, as Akos said just leave it running even if it looks stuck in 'Syncing...'. Eventually it will be up to date.

C´mon guys @Dropbox ... What is going on? The thing is stuck at "Syncing" ... THIS IS A BUG, please do kindly fix it.

Thanks in advance

Windows 10 - Same problem here for the last few days.
tried every suggested fix but nothing stops it 'Syncing...' - ridiculous. 

First Step - Went from Pro to Plus and if tomorrow nothing works will just get out of here. What a plonkers !!!!

For about two days now several of my systems have been stuck at "Syncing..." That includes one desktop running Windows 10 and two servers running Windows Server 2012 R2.

I have two other Windows Server 2012 R2's that are not having this issue and one MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina also without this problem. All are on the same dropbox version which is v88.4.172

So far I've tried restarting the affected computers and obviously restarting Dropbox. I've tried fixing hardlinks and folder permissions. Nothing is working and the three systems I noted above are still after two days stuck at "Syncing..." with no other information available to me.

I've looked at the disk access of the dropbox processes and they don't seem to be doing much. Barely reading from the C drive at a few bytes. Seems like it has stalled but why? - No idea.

Honestly I'm very angry about this, I'm a paying customer and right now this is unusable. I want a refund for all the time I'm losing.

I've been a loyal dropbox customer for many years.. but this is ridiculus.. by far the worst upgrade we've seen. 

Agree. It took 2 days, 2 days..2 weeks ago had similar problems, at least they fixed it then. Now...nothing. support chat just gave me the general bla-bla. I pay 20 dollars each month, this is really becoming ridiculous. Dropbox used to be such a reliable service. Now, I don't trust them anymore.

I'm currently looking around for other providers and plans. Any suggestions? GDrive, OneDrive?

I was able to fix two of my systems by completely uninstalling Dropbox and then reinstalling it. This update is clearly messed up somewhere. After waiting 2 days for it to "work" reinstalling it made it work within 30 minutes on both systems.

Come on Dropbox... get it together.

Hey everyone, thanks for joining the discussion here!

I'm really sorry to hear about the issues you've had over the weekend with syncing. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their input on what worked for them.

I'm very happy to hear that the steps worked for you lucaspinhro, thanks for updating me with this!

If anyone is still having this issue where syncing appears to be stuck (Joshua5, Matt F.16, CAGR), can you please take a look at the steps mentioned here to see if that does the trick?

After taking the above steps, you'll need to allow a short time for the changes to take affect before you see syncing progress. The more files you have, the longer this might take as it applies the changes to the files.

Akos, anonymous, Exis and hdmf I located your tickets with our Support team and have passed along all of your comments there too to keep my colleagues who are assisting you there in the loop. They'll be able to assist you best from there.

kelly75, if you're still having an issue with this, would you mind if I reach out to the email linked with your profile?

Thanks for all your patience while we look into this with you, don't hesitate to get back to me with any updates or questions.

I hope you all have a great day!

Hi Daphne, I cannot follow the directions because my Dropbox runs on a headless Linux server. There is no GUI. No preferences. I can only control it with the command-line (CLI): python.py status

python.py start

python.py stop

..etc..

What do I do?! Daphne 

I'm in the same boat. I'd started another thread about it but not had any luck. I've tried the fixing of hardware links and permissions with no noticable difference to the state of syncing.

This seemed to really kick off around the 17th Jan. Sudden appearance of conflicted files causing problems in project sensitive folders. An initial fixing of permissions seemed to put a stop to that but its now been stuck syncing since Saturday. Just how long are we meant to wait before we get any sync feedback? I currently can't use dropbox which is somewhat problematic.

my original post 

BTW: Can we access message autosaves? One of mine has vanished and I'd like it back.

"Same problem here. Last night support chat couldn't solve it either. Two weeks ago something similar happened. This time, it is just "Syncing..." No numbers, no indexing." marianemes

My Dropbox is exactly like this.. It wont move stuck on sync with no DL / UL numbers
it sbeen like this for the past 5 days, cant find a solution. 

As an update to my situation:

No amount of time appears to unstick my sync status at "1 uploading, 7 downloading".

File explorer access is sluggish, worse in my dropbox folder.  The sync status icon overlays take many seconds to minutes to update; the larger files, the longer it takes.

I'm getting some new file downloads, although I have created very few on other machines and am not sure if its reliable.

I can create new file uploads, but one I did is labled "New Folder" when the folder has been renamed on my local computer, but online and on other devices it shows "new folder".

Having same issue. Files have not synced since Jan 9, 2020. I've reinstalled dropbox and it seems to be stuck and not syncing at all. Is Dropbox fixing this soon?