Box Drive not showing changes in Box (not syncing?)

Hi ,

Have you tried logging out and logging back in? Make sure to double check if there are any Box Drive error notifications to be aware of.

If it doesn't work, this would be something our Box Support team would like to investigate with you; contact Box Support to help you directly through a case.

I did the log out and log back in again (out of Box) and it worked.  I think I understood that to be log out of my computer the first time I read it.  This time I found the Box icon in the system tray and logged out there.

I got the same problem but it wouldn't work even after I logged out and logged in. There is no any options in the Box Drive app or Box.net website for my to enable the sync. What is going on? What is the Box Drive app for? Box is not supporting any offline folder anymore?

I'm really getting fed up with the bad syncing capabilities of Box drive - it's just a huge mess. It takes forever for files to appear, even if they are only a few kb in size. Paradoxically, you can find them using Box Drive search but they don't display in the folder even after a refresh. What's wrong here? It's really annoying, does anybody else have the same problem?

I am starting to hear similar complaints. Basically I can upload a file, a collaborator also on my team does not see the updated file until an hour later. They tried the above and we are sitting on the same floor in the building and hard wired. This just seemed to become a bigger issue in the last 3 weeks. 

It's becoming worse and worse. It now takes up to 10 seconds for the contents of the folder to even appear and we see it across all platforms. What is going on? It also seems like nobody at Box cares greatly or monitors this forum. We have started looking into alternatives.

Experiencing the same issues.  Also haven't heard anything from Box Support.  No idea what is the issue or if they are working on any solutions.

If I logged out and in as well. The files were loaded yesterday and still not showing today. As somebody else mentioned - if you search, it finds it and then appears in the folder. This would mean that I need to know the name of every file and search which is very time-consuming. And/or essentially manually update using the search function while having Web Box and Box Drive open at the same time. Is there any timeframe for a resolution?

Has there been any update on this?  We are still having the issue and the answer of log off and log back in can not be the final solution.  

No progress in my opinion, we still see the issue across all devices. Very disappointing that the Box team seems unable/unwilling to fix this issue. We have started using OneDrive as alternative. It's certainly not as intuitive to set up as Box is but there are zero issues with syncing across devices.

We have the same problem. We have multiple users, some Mac and some Windows. It does not refresh across OS very fast, plus it is not refreshing quickly on the same OS. This is getting increasingly worse and worse.

There should be an option added to the Box Drive context menu to force a sync to ensure that all data has been updated.  Logging off and logging back on is not working for our group, it is requiring too many calls to our Help Desk which could be easily avoided.

I'm having the same problem. I create a tiny file on one computer on my desk, and it can take minutes or hours for it to appear in Box Drive on my other computer. From time to time it never appears and I just get that red icon, with no way to make it force sync. I love a lot of things about Box, but the inability to do a force sync/refresh is incredibly frustrating.

I've got the same problem and it is amazing problematic as we do work on the same files from different companies and countries! My Box Drive is not updating from Box Online and vise versa. Yesterday added folder by a colleague is still not on my Box Drive ... how can we work further like that? Will Box act and/or explain us how to manage this? It is not a matter of frustration anymore it becomes a matter of ability to work or not!

Exactly Serge! It is too hard to know when a folder has not synced correctly, especially when a colleague has done work in there. I do a daily report each day and when I am out, my colleague needs to do it for me.  Too many times have I asked him if he did it, just to find out my Box Drive did not sync and I have to log off and log back in to Box to get it updated and it takes a while to process.

Both happy and sad to find this post. Happy in so much as it's not just happening to our team; sad that it is so rampant and Box support skirts around the issue with logout/login. Same answer they gave me regarding some errors that show on my Box tray icon. They said logout/then login and if resolved they should go away. I explained the folders and files were deleted from Box period; nothing to resolve as they don't exist there anymore. The answer to that was retry all. . . explained again, don't want to put them back in and then delete again. . . . .anyone have an answer on that issue?

I have the same issue. When I reboot my machine or restart Box Drive, during the synch, it fails on the folders that have already been deleted. They show up in the Box Drive file list, but in Box, the folders are not there. Nothing resolves this.

This is a show stopper for using Box for file sharing. What good is a file sharing app if it doesn't share?

I have found a reliable solution though it is a workaround -  which is to release/renew the network connection.

1. Open 'cmd' 

2. ipconfig /release

3. Wait for the system to process that.

4. ipconfig /renew

A note for tech savy people is that the renew alone is not sufficient to trigger a sync.

Thanks 24579851208 - That fix worked for me (though not immediately). 🙂

When will Box Drive officially be able to support syncing between Windows PC and Box.com? Reading through this thread and sharing experiences with colleagues, it's clear this functionality is not yet fully implemented. Case in point: if you drag and drop a file to Box.com, it will appear in Box Drive in anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour (on average). Dragging and dropping to a Windows PC, it will never sync, and there are no options to push a sync from the workstation. In other words, drag and drop just puts the files in the local Box folder. A "cloud icon" never appears on them. To be honest, it's not very useful to have a one-way sync. I can see that fixing this problem has not been a priority for Box.com. Please reconsider, as I have already suggested that our company (Fortune 500) consider moving to a different platform. This software is dysfunctional.

Same problem here. App says that files are synced but windows explorer shows unsynced folders. To fix I just reboot windows. It's easier for me to log into windows than box app. 

I had an issue with sync stopping between box.com and box folder on my desktop. I tried the refresh button in the box dialog (see attached). While in there I also cleared / re-attempted to sync any errors shown on the list. It seemed to reset the sync and now its working well again. Thought I would post this hopefully it helps people with the same problem. . 

Same here. We have quite a lot of files and folders on Box. If new folder is create, it takes random amount of time to sync to desktop from web.

Example:

• Folder is created by system/user to Box, let's call such folder "Folder20220718" - it might have already one file inside.
• Folder Folder20220718 is available to all users via web browser, no issue here.
• However, it is usually not available on our colleague's PCs no matter restarts/log-outs. To see this Folder20220718, we have to wait to another day usually.
• As a workaround, we can use Box search functionality via Tray icon. This locates Folder20220718 on the web and initiate resync to desktop so it is available in Windows Explorer. However, we cannot push Box Drive client on Windows to fully resync, nor it does automatically (unless we wait to the next day). There is simply no option and right-click on Box folder in Windows Explorer resync only main folder, not subfolders.

My colleagues usually works from Windows Explorer so this workaround is not suitable - Box client should be the one who maintains up-to-date sync between web version and PC, no matter what. But it does not!

Can you have a look on this? It seems like ongoing issue for some time as I can see from reactions here on forum.

Thank you in advance.

You can try "Refresh Folder" on right-click menu.