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

Forum Discussion

bwhight's avatar
bwhight
Helpful | Level 5
8 years ago

Smart Sync - Windows Explorer Search Not Working

I am testing Smart Sync for our team.  All fine but when files are 'Online Only', Windows Explorer search can't fined them.  I have tried a few PCs in our team and all have the same problem, so I don...
Desktop
Setting up the apps
  • Lucio's avatar
    Lucio
    7 years ago

    The Windows search functionality, that allows finding files set to online-only through the Smart Sync feature, is now available on computers with versions of Windows 8 and above, starting with the beta version 60.3 of the Dropbox desktop application that you can find here.

    When this is available in the stable version 60.4 next week, your computer should automatically update and receive the fix.

    Thanks to all that reported this and we appreciate your patience on this matter.

    Happy syncing!

mxoh's avatar
mxoh
Collaborator | Level 10
7 years ago

Hi there,

I am a Dropbox Business admin using Windows 10 with Dropbox desktop app installed. For online-only files, can they be indexed and searched through file explorer rather than dropbox.com? I initially thought that this is not possible but someone I know who is also a business user said that he is able to search his online-only files on file explorer. 

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    7 years ago
    Hi there, online-only files generally cannot be searched for in the OS search engine, since the files are physically not on the computer. Even the filenames you see aren’t really there, since each file is a placeholder grabbing basic details from the Dropbox site.
     
    As to why that other user is able to search, it might be to do with their configuration, or if the files were previously made local and a cache somehow exists on their machine. Regardless, this shouldn’t really happen, so this might only be a temporary behavior.
      • Jay's avatar
        Jay
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        7 years ago
        I’ll move this thread into that one for my colleague to see it. If OS search is supposed to be able to find the online-only files, then our dev team is already on the case it seems.

About Apps and Installations

Have a question about a Dropbox app or installation? Reach out to the Dropbox Community and get solutions, help, and advice from members.

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!