New Subfolder Doesn't Appear in Dropbox Folder

[Markstvn]

I'm new to DropBox.  For Now, I'm starting slowly, to get the hang of it.  I have a Professional Account and opted not to use SmartSync when installing the product.  For now I've kept it simple.  I have a folder on my local hard drive that contains about 8 or 10 subfolders, with mixed data files in the subfolders, mostly PDF"s and MS Word Files.  It's not particularly large, about 250 megs.  I copied and pasted the folder from it's place on my local drive to the New Drop Box Folder on the Same Local Drive.  All of the folders and files uploaded to Drop Box without a problem.  I added a new Sub-Folder to the Folder which was copied and pasted to the Drop Box Drive.  That folder and the one small pdf that was in it does not show up when I pull up the browser to view my files.  I did not add it to the Dropbox Folder on my local drive, because I was under the impression that when additional subfolders were added to the original folder they would automatically appear in the Drop Box Drive on both my local drive and the drop box cloud drive.  

The Drop Box program in the bottom right of my screen show that everything is up to date.  The app also reports no sync issues.  Under Preferences Selective Sync is selected, and shows the top level directory and all original subdirectories, and is selected to sync.   I am not using online only and have the preferences set to local.

Why isn't the new sub-directory showing up in my Dropbox files.  It would seem logical that when I select a directory as a folder to sync, any new subdirectories would automatically be added.  This would render this product pretty useless to me if it didn't add the new sub folders automatically.

I'm not interested in Smarty Sync and want to maintain my local files on my computer for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is my internet speed is adquate, but not great.

Please help me out here, this doesn't make sense to me.

[Здравко · Accepted solution]

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@Markstvn wrote:

...  I added a new Sub-Folder to the Folder which was copied and pasted to the Drop Box Drive.  ...  I did not add it to the Dropbox Folder on my local drive, because I was under the impression that when additional subfolders were added to the original folder they would automatically appear in the Drop Box Drive on both my local drive and the drop box cloud drive.  

...

Please help me out here, this doesn't make sense to me.

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Hi @Markstvn,

🙂 Yes, you have a bad impression. Actually, there is NOT a local Dropbox drive! I have made a proposal in this direction, but seems ignored yet. You can vote it up, if you want. Dropbox is a sync service, syncing the local Dropbox folder to the Dropbox cloud storage (the storage itself isn't visible local). The dropbox folder is a folder mostly like any other folder on your machine, not a drive! When you copied your subfolders to Dropbox folder, you just make... copies, nothing more. Whatever is under Dropbox folder, it gets in sync to the cloud, whatever is ouside - not. So, you have 2 copies, one in sync and other isn't. According your description you have made one more subfolder into outside subfolder. Hope, you are understanding already why the last action is not in sync and will never be. Is there some reason keep 2 local copies? 🧐 If not, move what need be in sync into Dropbox folder (again folder - not drive) and whatever need not - outside. So, every change you make on your content designated for sync, will get in sync to the cloud automatically and everything changed on the cloud will get in sync local. 😉 Probably more things make sense now.

Hope this clarifies matter.

[Markstvn]

Thank you and it does make perfect sense, and I obviously hadn't thought this through.  Under my current configuration, everytime I add something to drop box, I'm eating my drive space up, since Drop Box is a real storage folder.  This isn't what I wanted to hear, but I understand what you are saying.  I have to spend some time thinking this through, because this is not what I wanted to hear.  It raises a number of issues with me, since now there will be 2 sets of windows docs indexed by Windows, and I already have a substantial load of Paperport Folders which reference my existing folder structure.

I'm really not ready to have all my files in the cloud, (internet quality is not great for me) nor am I willing to forego my current directory structure which has been used over and over for physical backups.  I should have figured this out before I paid for an entire year of service at $199.

I had mistakenly thought the drop box folder was some kind of virtual folder instead of a double copy of data which is already saved somewhere else on my machine and which referenced my existing directory structure.  If I was starting out with a brand new computer, I can see having mainly a drop box folder as a root folder, and only saving and keeping files there.  My machine has been in service for a while and is loaded with docs that I need to constantly access, rearranging my whole directory structure just so I can use Drop Box and only keep one local copy of data on my computer i something I have to think about.