Have you spoken with Dropbox about the issue?
I am not at liberty to discuss internal communications like this.
It hasn’t “become a major theme involving quite a few of our customers”. It would actually be much better if it actually was. It is still a very sporadic condition and has affected a small number. So any incoming data is extremely limited. And also bear in mind, we have had some people report “It just started working again!” with no intervention on our part.
I am another Dropbox sufferer and have posted a couple of threads about it, including one where “it just started working again”. Unexplained restart after unexplained stop is not very satisfactory.
I added Bonjour a few weeks ago, and now switching from Dropbox to iCloud for syncing when away from base.
And another here with DropB issues.
I have also trawled through the forums and it does not appear to be an isolated incident to me.
I am unsure why DT continues to advertise DropBox support, when clearly it has issues. For me it’s been an ongoing pain for months, and I am struggling to find cost affective alternative solutions for our organisation. Simply to be told - oh well, sorry, nothing can be done - leaves a nasty taste, thats for sure, considering what it has cost us in license fees etc.
I’m another (regular) Dropbox sufferer.
Pending any hope of resolution, I’d be grateful to know from Devon whether simultaneously setting the same database to sync over both Bonjour and iCloud is recommended or not (as if it is I’ll keep doing it).
I would think that if it were not recommended to have two sync services running at the same time the Preferences/Sync panel would not allow it?
FYI, I run with Dropbox with Bonjour “on” on the iMac that I think of as the server. I have the MacBook, iPhone, and iPad running both Local Sync (with accept Bonjour connections “off”) and Dropbox (2 tb paid-for personal account). Both syncs in DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go are set for Automatic.
Everything just works.
I run with Dropbox with Bonjour “on” on the iMac that I think of as the server. I have the MacBook, iPhone, and iPad running both Local Sync (with accept Bonjour connections “off”) and Dropbox (2 tb paid-for personal account). Both syncs in DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go are set for Automatic
.
I recently added Bonjour sync and we had conversation about frequency of server busy etc messages. Like you I set up Bonjour with my iMac as the server and MacBook as the client. But I notice you say your MacBook has Bonjour Incoming connections OFF. After setting mine up to the instructions (I believed) I see my MacBook Incoming connections is ON. iPhone and iPad are OFF. I have just turned this OFF on the MacBook. Did you turn your MacBook to OFF after setting up or did I do something wrong?
It’s always been off. That’s how in the manual and how I did it. Without going back to re-read everything, I certainly didn’t intend to give the impression that a “non-server” (regardless of type of device, e.g. real computer or a mobile/tablet) should have Bonjour incoming accepted. See the manual, and if you want to read conversations, I suspect there are some here.
Thanks, I must have done something wrong.
Hey, but what can be wrong with “it works”? Giving you time to focus on your business! Other than messing time here, I have time to focus on my stuff!
Indeed! Although I have switched to iCloud sync instead of Dropbox, I now have two sync methods in parallel, and both on automatic, and hoping the server busy messages drop off, or reduce. Although harmless my OCD doesn’t like them.
What machine do you have running as the Bonjour server?
IMac. Retina 27" version a couple years old. Ethernet to local network. Lots of available memory (most not in use anymore and I no longer run the high memory stuff that often).
Ahh… makes sense. And you are indeed correct that Bonjour need only be enabled on one machine acting as the server, not on the client(s).
Just to add to the chorus here, my Dropbox is constantly out of sync lately too…to the point where I’m using DT less. Frustrating.
@BLUEFROG I think we have enough examples to conclude this is no longer an isolated issue. Maybe only a small percent of your users use the Sync option. Maybe a significant percent of those who use Sync check regularly to see it it worked.
But we have too many examples right on the Forum of users confirming major issues with Dropbox Sync to believe it is restricted to some rare use case among those who are trying to use the feature regularly.
Who knows if it is a DT3 issue or a Dropbox issue - but clearly the issue is big enough to dig into and identify the root cause.
I have posted my experience elsewhere, but I will share here. I hope it helps.
I am in the midwestern US, and Dropbox syncing of DT has been a mess for > a year. It would fail at times for no reason irrespective of what network I was on. Updates would not show up quickly (or ever). I would have to delete the cloud syncstore and start over every once in a while . . . it really slowed my full adoption of DT and DTTG, as I held back doing any mission critical work that relied upon cloud sync. And then…
I switched to CloudMe, and it just works. It is so nice to now have access to my DT data on all my devices quickly (I have no financial/business/other relationship of any kind with them). They have a free tier, so you can try before you commit.
I hope it helps. (And BTW, my experience with support from DevonTech has always been great for the 18 years (!!) I have been using DevonThink. I am confident that if they could have fixed it, they would have… I suspect this has to do with some vagary of Dropbox’s function.)
best,
jason
Thanks for the kind words, the longstanding support, and for sharing your experience. A few years back CloudMe went through some growing pains but it has been a sleeper in our experience for quite some time. 
Sad to see the lack of recognition of this problem. I guess were not getting any help on either this or the annotation-bugs with Apple Pencil in DTTG. Its been close to a year since all this started happening.
I guess I’ll be starting my hunt for alternative solutions to DT. Just really annoying that I paid so much for it…
Sorry you’re dissatisfied but this has been discussed at length here, and again, we cannot reproduce an issue nor do we have any usable data pointing to a potential culprit.
Every avenue we’ve explored so far has lead nowhere useful, let alone conclusive.
If we could fix it, we certainly would but reproducibility and useful data is required. We still have neither.
I’m one of those with who are sitting with an out of sync DT3 using dropbox.
Just to add to the list of problematic users.
I also switched from Scrivener to DT3, partly because of their dropbox problems which they said they could not replicate for iPadOS, and iOS.
Apparently there is some issues with dropbox api’s.
/A