July 15

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Dropbox – Preventing certain folders from syncing on some of your devices

By Christopher Mendla

July 15, 2015


Last Updated on November 30, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla

I need to put large files in my dropbox so that I can share them with one person. The process is simple enough with Dropbox installed on my desktop:

  • Right Click on the file
  • “Copy to Dropbox”
  • Go to the dropbox folder
  • Right click and choose “Share dropbox link”
  • I can then send an email with that link to the person I want to share the file with.

What happened today was that I had put a file in my dropbox from my desktop and shared the dropbox link as intended. However, when I was out and started up my laptop, it was unusable as the laptop was trying to sync 1.3 GB of data. When I looked at the task manager, Dropbox was using up a lot of CPU and disk access. I temporarily stopped the dropbox sync.

To Recap: My laptop was getting tied up trying to sync the files I had uploaded to Dropbox.
The solution is to create a folder in my dropbox folder and then mark that as “Do not sync” in dropbox. The basic process is
  • Create a folder in your dropbox folder. Call it something like “No Sync”
  • Put the files you want to share but not sync to your other devices in that folder
  • Go to the device that you don’t want to have syncing those files.
  • Right Click on the dropbox icon in the tray
  • Choose Preferences
  • Click on Account
  • Click on Selective Sync
  • Uncheck the folders you do not want to sync and click Update, Then click OK
Note – you can still share a dropbox link to files in that folder.
This will solve the problem that I discused in a previous post http://blog.chrismendlatech.com/2015/07/dropbox-slowed-my-pc-to-crawl.html
 

Christopher Mendla

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