# Spurious conflicts after Dropbox move

**URL:** <https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/spurious-conflicts-after-dropbox-move/35029>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [7 January 2024 22:48 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/spurious-conflicts-after-dropbox-move/35029 "2024-01-07T22:48:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![reticulatingsplines](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@reticulatingsplines](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/reticulatingsplines)\
**Post date:** [7 January 2024 22:48 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/spurious-conflicts-after-dropbox-move/35029/1 "2024-01-07T22:48:38Z")

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### Operating system

macOS

### Joplin version

2.13.12

### Desktop version info

Joplin 2.13.12 (prod, darwin)  
Client ID: 99b05b8b02ba4984ae3f0cda552689ef  
Sync Version: 3  
Profile Version: 44  
Keychain Supported: Yes  
Revision: e027cdc  
Conflict Resolution: 1.2.3  
Kanban: 1.0.7  
Markdown Prettier: 0.1.0  
Simple Backup: 1.3.5

and

Joplin 2.13.12 (prod, win32)  
Client ID: 3d72550cc54d4b69968d1b8ea68bb3a8  
Sync Version: 3  
Profile Version: 44  
Keychain Supported: Yes  
Revision: e027cdc  
Conflict Resolution: 1.2.3  
Cursor Sync: 2.1.0  
Kanban: 1.0.7  
Markdown Prettier: 0.1.0

### Sync target

Dropbox

### Editor

Markdown Editor

### What issue do you have?

Hi -

My setup:  
Multiple computers (work desktop and laptop (both macOS) and home Windows 10 desktop) are synced via Dropbox, where I use the Markdown editor (not an external editor). This worked well, until I had to move my files to a different Dropbox account, as part of a job change. I cloned everything to the new account and resynced with that account. While I know that that can be touchy, it initially seemed to have succeeded - all notes and resources load.

Expected behavior:  
If everything were working right, I would be able to edit any file, and a conflict would only occur if the file were simultaneously open on one of the other computers. (I.e. conflicts would be rare.)

Actual behavior:

- Editing any note - even when Joplin is only open on one computer, even when only one computer is on - spawns a conflict. This occurs with any kind of edit - plain text or resource addition. The edited note shows up in the Conflicts folder. Initially, I do not see a copy of the original in the original location and much of the time, one never shows up, even after synchronization, though this is not entirely reliable and sometimes one _does_ appear when I go back to look at the original notebook.
- Possibly consistent with there being no authentic conflicting file, the Conflict Resolution plugin generally throws up a "Not Found" message when I try to use it on these ostensibly conflicted files.
- The note can then be moved back to the original location. _If_ an original respawned (which again is rare), it has a different ID than the edited and restored note.
- At that point, addition and deletion of notes works as expected (if I delete the original note and move the edited note back into the correct location, both of these things stay completed, and adding a new note doesn't immediately cause a conflict.)
- If I re-edit a note to which this has happened, it acts as expected: no weird jumps to Conflict.
- This all occurs even in Safe Mode.

Note: someone has previously described something similar, but their solution of "have a Joplin-only Dropbox" is suboptimal and seems unnecessary, since everything was previously working in Dropbox:

> [@Conflicts occuring when they shouldn't be](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/conflicts-occuring-when-they-shouldnt-be/15801/14):
>
> Can you try this please Pick a note that isn't in Conflicts Find its id (either in its properties or can right click on it and copy markdown link) Find it in Dropbox under Apps/Joplin, the file will be named \<note id\>.md and copy updated\_time Open your Joplin database which should be in your user profile dir in .config/joplin-desktop/database.sqlite and run these queries: select updated\_time from notes where id = '...' select \* from sync\_items where item\_id = '..' Save the results 5. Now …

> [@Conflicts occuring when they shouldn’t be \[solved\]](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/conflicts-occuring-when-they-shouldn-t-be-solved/24073):
>
> Continuing the discussion from [Conflicts occuring when they shouldn't be](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/conflicts-occuring-when-they-shouldnt-be/15801): I want to record the solution I found to my problem of lots of conflicts occuring... I created a new, dedicated Dropbox account, reinstall Joplin from scratch and re-imported my notes into it. I have not had any conflict issues since then. Is this advice/best practice a good fit to be added to the FAQ? You may encounter difficulty if you use a single Dropbox account for both Joplin and other unrelated files. Best pra…

Answering some of the questions brought up in those threads, all computers have the correct time/time zone (GMT-05:00), and Dropbox is also set for GMT-05:00. Note that it's also not secretly syncing to both the former and new Dropbox accounts; I only see changes occur in the Joplin directory at the new Dropbox account. Updating to the newest betas also doesn't seem to have made a difference.

I've attached snippets of the console from when I edited a file and synced as described above, creating a conflict (in this case, no unedited file remained/respawned in the original location), and then when I moved the edited file back to the original location and resynced.

I'd appreciate any help - while I could manually edit each of several thousand notes in several notebooks and move them back to their original locations, and given the behavior exhibited so far that might stop the spurious conflicts, but I'm hoping there is a better answer!

### Log file

[20230107\_joplin-conflicts.txt](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/uploads/short-url/mMamkBtHc6ThXjDx82NL99sk7OR.txt) (4.26 KB)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daeraxa](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/daeraxa/32/6172_2.png) [@Daeraxa](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/Daeraxa)\
**Post date:** [7 January 2024 23:11 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/spurious-conflicts-after-dropbox-move/35029/2 "2024-01-07T23:11:28Z")

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It might take a bit of time to complete but if you still have a good local copy of your data you could use option within Joplin to just use your local data to replace everything in your sync target (in the sync \> advanced section).

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/uploads/cozic/original/3X/0/1/01868b92a5fe6f0270cd299fb845ae84ad30e2a7.png)

Just make sure you have good JEX backups of everything before you do anything.

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**Author:** ![reticulatingsplines](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@reticulatingsplines](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/reticulatingsplines)\
**Post date:** [23 January 2024 02:51 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/spurious-conflicts-after-dropbox-move/35029/3 "2024-01-23T02:51:03Z")

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I ended up doing a full restore from a last-known-good .jex backup (with manual export/reimport of notes that postdated that backup); I was concerned about whether or not I could actually trust the post-move local copy of the data. That does seem to have nuked whatever weirdness was going on - still no clue what in particular caused it, though!

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**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/uploads/cozic/original/3X/1/c/1c948e33314e232a0927789508474d8624f4270b.png) [@system](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [22 February 2024 02:51 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/spurious-conflicts-after-dropbox-move/35029/4 "2024-02-22T02:51:53Z")

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