Making a file online only

Hi ​@Chip Ge, 

Welcome to Box Community and we’d love to further assist! 

For the folders currently marked as available offline, you can right-click on the folder and select “Make Available Online Only” from the context menu to revert it back to online-only status.

This action applies at the folder level; individual files inherit the status of their containing folder.

So, you cannot make a single file explicitly “available online only” independently—files follow the availability status of their parent folder.

Hope it answers your question, and let us know if you have questions or clarifications! 

This, or even having the  “Make Available Online Only” for folders permanently available to delete the cache, is a major deal breaker for us.

Am I correct in understanding:

1. There is no way to force a single file to download without opening it?
2. You cannot manually free up local space by marking a folder as “Online only”, unless you had previously marked the entire folder as “Offline only”?

Why this is important to me:

1. Often 3rd party software bugs out when trying to access large virtual (online) files before they have been downloaded, so it’s more reliable to download them before trying to open them. But these are individual files, not folders. There are many other large files within the same folder, and I often only want one of them.
2. If I am preparing to do some task that I know will require some more free space on my drive, I need to be able to manually clear out specific folders that I have accessed recently but no longer need cached. Dropbox, and even Nextcloud, both have this feature.