We are aware of the issue with the badge emails resending to everyone, we apologise for the inconvenience - learn more here.

Forum Discussion

MikeB1971's avatar
MikeB1971
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago

Cancel an online-only file download (as it is happening)

Hi Folks, Well this is odd. If you have a large online-only file and you (double-)click it to access it in Windows Explorer, Dropbox starts downloading it (syncing it). So far so good. But wh...
Desktop
Sync
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    2 years ago

    Hi MikeB1971, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

     

    Currently, there isn't a direct feature to stop this downloading of the file when you attempt to open it.

     

    What you could try is to right click the file or folder, and mark it as available online-only, so that they won't try to download.

     

    If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

Hi MikeB1971, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

 

Currently, there isn't a direct feature to stop this downloading of the file when you attempt to open it.

 

What you could try is to right click the file or folder, and mark it as available online-only, so that they won't try to download.

 

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

MikeB1971's avatar
MikeB1971
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago
Jay wrote:

Hi MikeB1971, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

 

Currently, there isn't a direct feature to stop this downloading of the file when you attempt to open it.

 

What you could try is to right click the file or folder, and mark it as available online-only, so that they won't try to download.

 

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

Hi Jay,
Just a follow-up on this, right-clicking and resetting the online-only status works! But interestingly, only in native Explorer (I am using Directory Opus, where this does nothing but hang the app).

OK, that's a useful workaround.

I'll just have to remember to keep the mouse cursor away from files that are online-only from now on...

(A "interesting" side effect of accidentally clicking an online-only file and then resetting the status in this way, however, is that it has caused an onging upload to restart. So my 50-gig upload is now restarting instead of continuing at 30 gig where it was. Sigh...)

Thx,

Mike

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!