Deleting file in Box Drive for Mac does not delete the file from Box Online
Answered
Hi all,
Got a weird one here. I'm running macOS Ventura 13.1 and Box Drive 2.29.112. When I delete a Box file from the Finder, the Finder warns, "This item will be deleted immediately. You can't undo the action." I click the delete button and the file is deleted. Then, when I login to box.com online and look in the same folder, the file is still there. But it's not in my Box Drive Finder folder.
I've come to find out that all the files I've been deleting from the Finder are still in my box.com online folders. I thought if I was deleting a file from the Box Drive Finder window, that file should also delete from Box.com online, right?
Other notes: I have my Box Drive folders set to "Make Available Offline." (But if I set to online only, I get the same results.) I know my Box Drive is syncing, because if I add a file to the Box Drive Mac Finder window, the file immediately appears in Box.com online. If I move a file in the Box Driver Finder window to another folder, the change happens immediately on Box.com online. If I delete a file on Box.com online, the file is deleted in my Box Drive Finder window. All actions appear to be syncing except for when I delete a file from Box Drive in my Finder.
Anyone else experiencing this? Anyone know how to resolve this issue? Thanks!
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Hi Steve,
Happy Friday and welcome to Box Community!
Things that you need to confirm to successfully delete folders in Box:
- Confirm your permission to delete folders. If you're deleting root folders, please be informed that Owners can only delete root folders. Meanwhile as a collaborator, "Co-owners and editors can delete sub-folders, but not root folders. Only owners can delete folders at the root level."
- Upon deleting folders in your local Box folder, did you try to logout and login from Box.com or clear your cache and cookies, even?
Let me know how it goes,
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Hi Rona!
Thanks for responding, but I'm not deleting "folders." I'm deleting "files" from Box Drive. And these files do not delete from Box.com when I delete them from Box Drive. This began happening to every Mac computer that we have updated the macOS software to Ventura 13.1, so I'm suspecting it is a behavior that needs to be resolved in the Box Drive code.
However, since you mentioned "Folders," now that I try deleting a Folder from my Box Drive, I can see that the Folder I've deleted remains in box.com online. So, it appears I can delete Folders and Files from my Box Drive and neither one deletes from box.com online.
I have now tried clearing cache and also logging out and back into Box.com Online. Unfortunately, the issue remains. Permissions don't seem to be an issue here, as I'm doing more tests with new unshared folders where I an the Owner.
And... the Box Drive update today to 2.30.88 did not resolve the issue. Back to the drawing board!
Let me know if you have any idea why this is happening. Thanks!
Steve
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Hi everyone,
I did find a solution for this on Saturday. I had tried dragging Box Drive from the Applications folder to the Trash many times and reinstalling. Apparently that is not enough. You need to uninstall Box using Terminal. Restart your Mac. Then reinstall Box Drive and... problem fixed!
Box has instructions on how to uninstall Box Drive using Terminal here:
https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044196293-Uninstalling-Box-Drive
If your Box Drive is synced up with Box Online, then all you really need to do is Step 3, which is copy and paste this line into Terminal:
/Library/Application\ Support/Box/uninstall_box_drive
Then enter your password (hidden) and hit Return. Restart computer. Reinstall Box Drive and it will download all your files and should once again behave like it should. I've done this on all our computers with Ventura and it's resolved all issues. Good luck!
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thank you so much, Steve!!! it is working for me now!
i got a few error-type messages when i did Step 3 in Terminal (i am not familiar with using it) but it seems to be going ok. all of my files are in the process of re-syncing and i am keeping my fingers crossed that its is not doubling up on everything. hard to tell as i cannot see the top level of the Locations folder...
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Folks at Box: This is a SERIOUSLY BAD ISSUE!
Am I missing something here? Box is normally so good at telling users about bugs and issues. But thinking you've deleted a file(s) and/or folder(s) in Box online via Mac Explorer when you haven't is dreadful. Has caused some huge confusion already in the last few weeks with our accountants and, separately, with a major client, and I couldn't figure out what on earth was going on!! Not happy!!!
I do appreciate Steve's suggestion (thank you Steve) but I definitely don't want to start trying to copy & paste script into Terminal or anything like that. If this isn't fixed immediately then I'll simply have to delete Box Drive. Am really missing Box Sync right now :(
Please let us know what's being done about this guys???
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Hi Philip,
Just FYI, copying and pasting that Terminal command is Box's official way to delete Box Drive off of your Mac. Straight from their website. I left the "How To" link in my post, so people would know it's legit and not just take my word for it.
I was very unhappy with Box, also. And I miss Box Sync more than anything. The ability to hide folders that weren't being used was invaluable to some of our staff that have 14 years of way too many shared folders. (I've told Box that we need this feature back!) But unfortunately, we are stuck with Box Drive now. And I think this Terminal command (which is just a fast way to execute the file "uninstall_box_drive" file in the Library folder) is a quick solution that works well. Another solution would be deleting all the Box application, Support Files, Box Helper files, and various other box files that are on your Mac. (I tried this first, to narrow down which file was causing the issue, but I never found it. And it did not end up solving my issue.)
Anyway, just my two cents. For your own sanity, I hope you end up uninstalling and re-installing box with their command and save yourself the headache of calling them and having them just tell you the same not helpful things they told me. (Like taking a screencapture video of what was going on and sending to them. Big pain for something that is a simple issue to explain.) I'm not even sure if their techs are aware of this issue. I mean, if they aren't aware, they will be soon enough, because this is going to affect a lot of people that upgrade to Ventura! Not cool. Took me a lot of useless phone calls to Box and then bumping into this Terminal suggestion (suggested by a Box rep for an unrelated issue on the Box forum) for me to figure this one out. Anyone I can help save the headache and time of going through all the hoops that I did, and end up with a working Box Drive again quickly, is a win.
Also note, that their Uninstall command not only completely removes the Box Drive app and all it's support files, but it also removes all your Box folders and files from your computer. Your Folders and Files are re-downloaded after you re-install Box Drive. So, I made a quick backup of my Box folders to an external drive before I uninstalled Box, just to make sure I still had everything.
Good luck! Hope this solution helps you and you can move on to.... other newer Box issues? LOL! Thanks for listening to me vent, too! I needed that, too!
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Hi Mao,
Happy to hear this worked for you. Huge oversight on Box's part! Or maybe it is an Apple Update that caused this, which Box is scrambling to re-write their code to keep up with Apple's changes. Who knows! Anyway, glad to know my troubleshooting time invested saved someone else time!
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Hi Mao,
Our syncing issues came back again on one of our computers this week also. One that had the issue previously and was fixed. I uninstalled and reinstalled Box Drive twice this week on that mac laptop to get it working again. Solved the issue again, but leaves me questioning how long Box Drive will function until it returns yet again. And I'm also wondering how many other laptops have this issue that I don't know about. Going to have to start spot checking them again.
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I have been having this issue for weeks as well. Uninstalling and reinstalling only fixes the issue temporarily and then eventually it starts doing it again. I've lost track of how many times I have uninstalled and reinstalled this year. This is an incredibly frustrating issue, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one I guess? A permanent fix would be great though.....
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Hi Steve
Thank you very much for such a considered response. Fortunately I did manage to resolve this issue without having to completely delete Box Drive (but that would've been the next thing to try). Stupidly, all I had done prior to getting a reply from Box support, was to 'Log out' of Box Drive and log back in. They explained I should 'Quit' Box Drive and that did help fix the problem. Stupid, sure, but nevertheless, the fact that this was necessary is not good. I took weeks before I realised files I had been deleting via my Mac Finder view of Box were not actually being deleted in the Box web app. Not good at all :(
And I couldn't agree with you more about Box Sync. This needs to be restored urgently. Box Drive simply doesn't cut it.
But thanks again :)
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Hi Philip,
Just FYI, copying and pasting that Terminal command is Box's official way to delete Box Drive off of your Mac. Straight from their website. I left the "How To" link in my post, so people would know it's legit and not just take my word for it.
I was very unhappy with Box, also. And I miss Box Sync more than anything. The ability to hide folders that weren't being used was invaluable to some of our staff that have 14 years of way too many shared folders. (I've told Box that we need this feature back!) But unfortunately, we are stuck with Box Drive now. And I think this Terminal command (which is just a fast way to execute the file "uninstall_box_drive" file in the Library folder) is a quick solution that works well. Another solution would be deleting all the Box application, Support Files, Box Helper files, and various other box files that are on your Mac. (I tried this first, to narrow down which file was causing the issue, but I never found it. And it did not end up solving my issue.)
Anyway, just my two cents. For your own sanity, I hope you end up uninstalling and re-installing box with their command and save yourself the headache of calling them and having them just tell you the same not helpful things they told me. (Like taking a screencapture video of what was going on and sending to them. Big pain for something that is a simple issue to explain.) I'm not even sure if their techs are aware of this issue. I mean, if they aren't aware, they will be soon enough, because this is going to affect a lot of people that upgrade to Ventura! Not cool. Took me a lot of useless phone calls to Box and then bumping into this Terminal suggestion (suggested by a Box rep for an unrelated issue on the Box forum) for me to figure this one out. Anyone I can help save the headache and time of going through all the hoops that I did, and end up with a working Box Drive again quickly, is a win.
Also note, that their Uninstall command not only completely removes the Box Drive app and all it's support files, but it also removes all your Box folders and files from your computer. Your Folders and Files are re-downloaded after you re-install Box Drive. So, I made a quick backup of my Box folders to an external drive before I uninstalled Box, just to make sure I still had everything.
Good luck! Hope this solution helps you and you can move on to.... other newer Box issues? LOL! Thanks for listening to me vent, too! I needed that, too!
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Same issue here and only discovering it after months of managing a giant project folder solely with Box Drive for Mac only to discover the actual folder is a total disaster.. Thank you Steve and others for the detail here. Will try some of these solves after cleaning up this disaster. Want to love Box but this is so lame it makes it impossible..
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Jeez Fearghal, I can imagine how awful that must be - I only discovered this problem early on by luck, and I bet there are Mac Box users out there that don't even know (yet) that this is issue is happening to them! :(
Box team, you guys really need to fix this AND if at all possible you need to bring back Box Sync because Box Drive alone just ain't cuttin' it!!
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@Phillip - Yup - a bit of a mess to say the least. Glad to learn through this thread that its a known issue though - I thought I was the only one experiencing this. Huge thanks to you, Steve, Mao, and Sarah for chiming in here with your experience and suggestions!
@Box Team - Can you chime in on this thread, acknowledge the issue and suggest either a solve/workaround, or provide a timeline for a fix?
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Folks, unless it's just me (could be but I doubt it), I think this issue with Box Drive might be MUCH worse than first thought. Maybe for Windows users but certainly for Mac.
I strongly advise checking the following and would really appreciate feedback before I lodge a ticket with Box support (BUT don't do what I did following exchange with Box support - DON’T LOG OUT of Box Drive until you've read and checked the following):
- Find a relatively small (i.e. <2MB) file that is definitely sync’d between Finder/Explorer and the Web app via Box Drive
- Delete the file locally in Finder/Explorer (not in the web app)
- Wait for a couple of minutes (if it’s a small file Box Drive should sync the deletion to the web app almost immediately)
- I assume this will NOT be a problem for most users (maybe not at all for Windows users) but IF that file hasn’t been deleted please let us know here and then…
- Force a sync manually either by:
- right clicking in Finder/Explorer on the folder that contained the file you deleted and click “Refresh folder” (on Mac, not sure command on Windows)
- or go to the web app and use the menu commands there to force the same folder to sync to see if the sync process will delete that file from the folder in the web app.
IF the file you deleted locally doesn’t delete in the web app by syncing then the problem is serious because:
- Box support told me last week I should log out of Box Drive to solve this problem. I did that 8 days ago (as per my post above) and did so knowing that all the files I had sync’d locally would be removed (a warning message appears and it’s pretty clear - but that’s not the point!)
- That seemed to solve the issue. I tested at the time and files I deleted locally were being deleted in the web app. A week ago BUT NOT ANY LONGER TODAY!
- So stupidly, without giving the problem enough thought, I repeated the ‘fix’ from last week of logging out of Box Drive and sure enough syncing is working again
- But I immediately realised ‘oh crap, when did the problem start again and how many files haven’t sync’d properly in the last week or so?!!”
- Sure enough, I’ve just lost and entire weekend of work because files I worked on, including a crucial business spreadsheet, didn’t sync to the web app and when I logged out of Box Drive all my local files were deleted :(
- And I don’t even know how many other files this might have happened to over the last week or so!
Not surprisingly I now have very strong views on Box Drive but will save that for Box support. If anyone has similar issues, particularly if you had this issue before and thought you’d fixed it but it’s repeating, please provide feedback ASAP before I contact them? Thanks a lot in advance.
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Phillip,
So sorry to hear of your continued troubles.. I've been navigating the same thing so can empathize.
Unfortunately, I'm in the middle of finalizing my project this week and with a 70GB folder can't run the above tests at the risk of causing further problems for myself.
That said - up until the end of last week, I was experiencing the problems you describe - i.e.
- If I delete a file synced file in the finder, it would not be deleted from the web app or box, it would just disappear from the finder.
- Then, if I tried to add a new file with the same name to the same location, it would copy to the folder but never ever sync back up with the web app. In that case, I would see the NEW file in the finder folder and the OLD file on Box web app.
THEN, this morning I tried the same experiment - adding a file via the finder, then deleting it via the finder, and checking to see if it was also deleted from Box. Much to my surprise, it was gone from Box also and all is working as expected. This is BIZARRE as I have not made any changes or updates at all to my system or the Box app since last week. Its just all the sudden working. WEIRD!
Not sure if this is helpful at all but thought I'd post the experience here. Will chime in again when it inevitably stops working again!!
Good luck with all that you have going on. I hope this gets figured out.
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Hi Philip,
I logged in to my Box Online today to see how it is behaving this week. I ran some tests and found that, once again, files & folders that I delete in Box Drive are NOT deleting off the server. I, too, have been using the "Right click and Refresh Folder" technique on both individual folders within Box Drive and the Box Drive folder itself. Sometimes this kicks things into gear. Today it was not doing anything.
I decided to follow your lead and log out of Box Drive (effectively deleting all my files) and then logged back in. I then created a test folder in Box Drive and dropped in a few small files and created 4 dummy folders within my test folder. Then I deleted a few of the test files & folders. At first no results, but after a few minutes the test files and folders deleted off the Box Online. (I think it was slow because I had just signed back into Box Drive and it was still thinking a lot to re-download all the files.)
So, I didn't have to delete Box Drive entirely today. Just logout and delete all my files. This does not fix the issue every time I try it, but it did today. I will check it again next Monday. I will also spot check a few of my co-workers computers and see how theirs are doing this week. I'm sure I'll find a few that aren't syncing again. I'll let you know if logging out fixes them again or if I need to uninstall Box Drive to resolve the issue again.
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Hi Fearghal, Hi Steve
Thank you both very much for that feedback. I always helps to know you're not going completely insane(!) although naturally I'm sorry you're experiencing these problems as well.
BTW Just to avoid any confusion, if needed, I was warning against logging out of Box Drive before making sure you're not going to suffer the way I did yesterday. It sounds like Steve is on top of this but, Fearghal, if you're in the middle of finishing a crucial project this week I would be extremely careful not to log out of Box Drive before your project is finished and you've had time to compare your view of Box folders and files locally versus the web app.
I'm going to take some time out asap to log an 'Urgent' ticket about this (or hopefully re-open the ticket I lodged 9 days ago) as this is seriously bad fault IMO.
Thanks again and will update further in due course if/when I have any further info.
Phil
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Hi, everyone. Thank you all for the input!
I was having the same issues as you all until a day or two ago, but today, DELETING FROM THE FINDER SEEMS TO BE WORKING!! I didn't change anything on my end (as far as I know), so perhaps it was fixed...???
Keeping my fingers crossed! Let me know if you are experiencing the same.
Mao -
Mao,
That is good to hear. I have noticed the same thing - deleting files through the finder seems to be working now and I didn't change anything... That said, I don't think its working consistently so make sure you check every now and then!! My workflow now is to first delete a file through the finder, then CTRL-click the enclosing folder and select "View on Box.com" from the contextual menu to see the folder in the web browser and make sure its gone for real. Like I say, it seems to be working but not consistently.
I hope you're all figuring out work-arounds for this - its been a nightmare on this end. Moving off Box at the next available opportunity.
F.
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Hi Fearghal, Mao
I have been able to replicate the error. I changed ALL folders and files in Finder to "Make Available Online Only" (after checking there were no local files that I hadn't sync'd to the web app that would be lost). I then deleted one file via Finder, waited half an hour and, when it still had not been deleted from the web app, I submitted a ticket. Box support had asked me to submit logs which I've done along with 'before and after' screen grabs showing the file removed from Finder but not from the Box web app sometime after it was deleted via Finder.
Interestingly, I've just updated Box support to tell them that earlier today I rebooted my laptop (for unrelated reasons) and noticed the file has now been deleted from both Finder and the web app. IMO this tells me there must be something not quite right with Box Drive auto-syncing/updating between Mac Finder and the Box web app (ie a reboot is forcing a sync that sometimes happens but not always). Will update again in due course if/when I know more.
Phil
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