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Apr 23, 2017 6:47 AM UTC
Question

Dropbox Smart Sync + Adobe Issues

Looking for a bit of help around Dropbox's new 'Smart Sync'.

When I've worked on a file and then choose to have that file synced offline, reopening the likes of Illustrator or Photoshop will force that file to re-sync to my desktop before the application opens – meaning Adobe needs to basically make live recently used files.

Is there any way I can turn this off, so Adobe apps don't pre-load previous content? What it's doing is forcing me to wait 2-3 mins while files I've chosen to sync offline re-sync, and it's a pain in the ars.

Anyone with a solution?

Thanks!

Jason

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13 replies

beninu
Participating Frequently
Aug 17, 2023 5:34 PM UTC

It might be I'm a bit off target here, but my problem isn't as much that the files I have stored are only online files, but that there is a conflict between Dropbox sync and Adobe's own synchronization that breaks the links. I could of course let Adobe use a different default folder for all Adobe CC files, but instead I have chosen to let Dropbox ignore the Adobe folder (and by that automatically all subfolderse recursively), simply by applying this command in PowerShell once and for all. This is only a thing I have to do once, and now Dropbox completely ignores that particular folder and acts as it isn't a part of my Dropbox documents folder (as many other dropbox users I made my Documents Personal Folder point to Dropbox as that is a great convenience in almost any other scenario than Adobe). So instead of having to make a different folder for Adobe to work, but still be able to let Adobe use "Documents" personal folder I simply did the following:

I opened Powershell and entered the following command:

Set-Content -Path 'D:\Dropbox\Adobe\' -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1

(of course replacing the path to the location of your Dropbox folder. As you can see from the code snippet above, I personally keep my Dropbox on a separate disk (D:) - not just a separate partition - so I don't have to redownload all local files if I reinstall my Windows)

Using that command will make Dropbox sync ignore that folder including all subfolders. But the Personal Folder "Documents" will still point to "Documents\Adobe" which is by far the most stable solution for Adobe CC in my experience.

This is of course the Windows solution. There are similar solutions for Mac or Linux, and if that's what's needed I can return with a solution to those two environments as well.

If this is completely off topic I apologize in advance.

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kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
Aug 17, 2023 11:04 PM UTC

everything related to adobe's local sync folder is soon to be moot because adobe's discontinuing that services in the next few months.

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Participant
Apr 25, 2022 2:48 AM UTC

Any idea Adobe? This is so frustrating! I've been facing the same issue since the new Adobe After Effects version 22.3.0. It seems like Dropbox and Adobe lose their previous integration settings.

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Participant
Apr 25, 2022 2:25 AM UTC

Any idea what's going on with this issue Adobe? It's so frustrating!!

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Participant
Jan 16, 2021 6:18 PM UTC

Bump - it would be cool for Adobe to fix or acknowledge this issue.
The silence feels like a passive statement for "Well, why don't you pay us for Adobe Cloud Storage instead!?"  It makes me think of when Steve Jobs told everyone that the phone reception was fine, they were just holding their phone wrong.

Anyhow, same deal in Audition:
- Saving files the first time - I'll hit "save as" and if it's in a DropBox Sync'd folder, I can go have a snack and come back by the time the interface is responding again
- Recording in a multitrack workspace, all sorts of "could not save metadata" and "destination drive is full" errors


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Participant
May 23, 2021 11:26 PM UTC

You might want to try BOX cloud storage with the BOX Drive desktop app. It mounts your entire cloud storage as if it is a mounted server - and then acts as a server. For instance, you can open an Indesign file directly from the mounted drive, it reads it right into the app (no downloading to your drive) and even retains links (local or not) once the Drive app knows where to point to (you only need to relink once, then you can open, save and resave all within the cloud).

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Participant
May 24, 2021 12:00 AM UTC

Sorry - should mention another alternative that works the same way is Google cloud storage with the "Google Drive" app.

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Participant
Jan 15, 2018 4:27 PM UTC

I found a solution for this.

In Illustrator you can do this:

Go to Preferences>File Handling and Clipboard>Number of Recent Files to Display (0-30) and change the value, either 0 or 1 if you want to have the recent file screen to show at all, 0 will show you just a black screen.

This should fix the issue.

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Inspiring
May 16, 2017 10:21 AM UTC

Same issue here but for video which is where this issue gets so bad that I can no longer open older project files that reference offline content. Essentially Premiere pushes Dropbox to sync the data (which can end up being hundreds of GBs!)

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Kanikas
Legend
Apr 24, 2017 5:52 PM UTC
Participant
Dec 6, 2017 5:31 PM UTC

Wish Adobe could pay attention on this issue.

Whenever Adobe products activate file browsing function such as "Open, Export, Save or Save As...", Adobe will trigger Dropbox to recall all the online-only files in that folder. The more online-only files in there, the longer we have to wait until all the files finish recalling.

I've contacted Dropbox's technical service and they said there is nothing they can do for helping stop Adobe from "scanning" files which will trigger Dropbox to recall those online-only files.

It has become an annoying daily process as long as I use Export or those functions above.

Hope Adobe could help us deal with this issue.

THANKS

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