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Fix file/folder size, counts, dates and storage

I'd like to preface this by saying that this is a bug that needs to be fixed, not an idea. Even so, Box suggested we post this here to get others to chime in and say that this should be fixed.

This is a problem that's been around for at least 1.5 years.

Often, when an account's folders and files are transferred to someone else, the account from which the data was transferred still shows something greater than 0 bytes owned. This becomes a problem for deleting that user, because we can't be sure if the transfer worked, and we don't want to delete an account that has data that will be lost forever. This seems to happen, more often than not, for accounts that have a lot of owned data prior to the transfer.

At the moment the workaround is to have a script run every day to detect when this has happened, and to then create a Box ticket to have someone in Box support run their own homegrown script that rectifies the situation for the individual account. (Note, Box created this script because this is a known problem that they have to regularly fix.) So, it takes our time to detect it and create the ticket, and it takes Box's time to fix it and deal with the ticket. This happens almost every week at least one time.

After 1.5 years, it's about time to fix this readily reproducible problem!

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Tischler, Mark D. shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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on roadmap  ·  Adminhadesara (Product Manager, Box) responded  · 

We are on track towards fixing this. We have made significant improvements in our Files, and Folder counts and their related sizes. They now happen in a near realtime speed and we also have a redundant process that runs and fixes these counts nightly. The current improvements are visible in most of your folders browsing experience and the enterprise level counts. We are in process of fixing counts that you can see for a given user, this will release in Calendar year 2024'Q3. There are also few minor improvements planned for the last quarter of the year.

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  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Is this related to another issue where they do not support hosting the metadata in Box Drive, only pulling it as needed, meaning you can similarly not get accurate file/folder properties because it doesn't have all of the file metadata present.

    35983096-search-for-box-drive-content-from-explorer-finder

  • LY commented  ·   ·  Report

    For certain folders that we move files in and out of, it would be useful if the "size" column truly displayed the number of files inside. I want my team to be able to skim and identify which folders have files inside easily. They could do this if the size updated to "0 files" when the folder was empty, but it almost never does this.
    Please make the number of files inside a folder display accurately in the size column.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have the same problem.
    If it takes a long time to resolve, can you please add a button to the web screen that allows me to easily request "someone in Box support run their own homegrown script that rectifies the situation for the individual account" in a hurry.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    ...and don't mention any competitors MUCH BETTER handling of this issue... they won't post it!!
    ...that's how scared they are... I put these posts on 'another' board & received great replies... lots of people so frustrated by this, they're migrating to drop...x

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree 1,000%. I have to submit support tickets about 3-4 times per week to have them reset my storage. It seems like such a basic feature for an online storage and file management company to already have working properly. Their automated response is always that the staff is aware of this problem and is a longer-term goal for the team to tackle. The problem is they have been replying this same way for over 5 years!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    My Senior VP of Operations was FLABBERGASTED when Box told him this has been a "known bug" for MULTIPLE YEARS and Box hasn't fixed it. This bug (improper document count) leads to HOURS of wasted time, HOURS of emails, HOURS of questions from employees and causes tons of wasted times checking EACH FOLDER to make sure those folders are truly empty.

    HOW BUSH-LEAGUE is BOX??? I will be happy to provide reference(s) for moving to DropBox. Feel free to contact me.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Box must think this is a joke... but the USERS do not!!!
    try using DROPBOX - we did, and are migrating away from Box due to poor customer service of this and other issues

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    In order to clean my mess of files in different clouds I downloaded everything to merge and re-distribute files. Once I got all my files out of box I realized that not having even 1 file in my account the Storage Used is 3.1 GB of 50.0 GB.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Still having this problem in 2022 - incorrect file count / file numbers showing in folders. This creates unnecessary complications and explanations for why the counts are off.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    It has been 3 years since the problem was identified and no solution has been implemented since

  • Ankush Gambhir commented  ·   ·  Report

    We are also facing the similar issue where on home page it says more than 4000 files but in actual they are approx. 2300 files if we count manually in sub folders. Any idea by when it will be resolved? As it is something disastourous when doing the migrations as we cant keep on checking subfolders every-time for every folder.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Have a refresh button to update file storage changes.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Incorrect storage capacity after empty all files in Box drive and trash can.
    There is unknown 15.4 GB occupied.
    How to clean it up?

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    We have an issue with seeing correct file counts. Our users would like for the column heading message to at least say, “Approx. Size”.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    It has been implied that accurate counts are a side effect of the architecture and not easily resolved. If so, labelling the column, Approximate Size, would be helpful.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    I am using Individual Pro Plan with 100GB limit. My problem is that the files size i uploaded is of 20GB in total. But the account information shows 30.1GB . Trash is cleared.

    Need an quick reply on this

  • Luis Herrera commented  ·   ·  Report

    We are too experiencing this issue...is there any way we can run a script to fix this orselves ? or are you going to apply a permanent fix soon?

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