Searching Dropbox in new CloudStorage location Using Finder

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Now that I’ve updated Dropbox and all my files have been moved to:

~/Library/CloudStorage

it appears I can no longer search specific Dropbox folders using Finder (I tried searching both online-only and locally saved folders).

In case it matters, I’m running latest Dropbox build and MacOS 13.2.1

I can find things in Dropbox using Finder when searching broadly, like “Macintosh HD” (too many results) and spotlight search appears to find things there as well (not great for my needs) but if I drill down to a specific folder in Dropbox and try searching I get 0 results.

One of my daily workflows involves searching a specific Dropbox folder quickly in Finder.

Is this expected behavior? I saw the following on the Dropbox support site which didn’t make me feel better:

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Is there some sort of reindexing that needs to happen or is Finder no longer an option for targeted searches in Dropbox?

If the latter, does anyone use something else (besides the Dropbox app) to search specific folders in the Library/CloudStorage location of Dropbox?

Thanks for any insights you may have!

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Have you tried the search with Spotlight, instead of the Finder?
Acc. to the Dropbox-Site that should be possible.

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I have gotten Spotlight to find items in the new Dropbox location but, unfortunately, the search results aren’t complete enough or displayed in the way I need.

I often need to quickly scan the file info (title, size, format, created date, tags etc.) for 25+ documents with a similar title that are in a particular location/folder, which was easy to do when using Finder and a “search in this folder” type of query.

I’m starting to think this will no longer be possible with Dropbox in the CloudStorage location and that I will need to move the files I search regularly to a non-Dropbox location or an app like DevonThink.

Thanks for your follow-up!

2 Likes
4

I just tried HoudahSpot and it works great! I searched for specific text in the files. I simply added ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox as a search location. You can find it at HoudahSpot – Powerful File Search Tool for Mac .

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Fantastic, thank you @agmalis , I see it is part of Setapp (which I subscribe to), so, I’m going to give that a look straight away!!

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I just uninstalled Dropbox and reinstalled it because if this exact issue. I am now keeping my files in the user directory; not the CloudStorage. Spotlight is working fine.