Include/Exclude Patterns

The Include Patterns and Exclude Patterns settings let you selectively copy items from the source to the destination of your sync.

If no Include Patterns or Exclude Patterns are provided, the full contents of the source are copied to the destination.

Include Patterns

Use glob patterns to define the items that will be included in the sync.

If set, only path names matching one or more of these patterns are synced. Path globs work the same way they do in Automations. Prefix patterns with **/ to apply them to filenames in any folder or subfolder.

Multiple include patterns can be configured for a single sync.

Exclude Patterns

Use glob patterns to indicate items that will be excluded from the sync. If set, any path names matching one or more of these patterns are ignored and excluded from the sync.

This setting takes precedence over the include patterns setting when a path matches both.

When a folder name matches any Exclude Patterns, the entire folder is not copied. All contents of the folder, including every recursive subfolder and its contents, are also excluded.

Path globs work the same way they do in Automations. Prefix patterns with **/ to apply them to filenames in any folder or subfolder.

Multiple exclude patterns can be configured for a single sync.

Glob Pattern Matching

Glob patterns let you specify the criteria for matching files and folders to be included or excluded with a sync. Globs support both folder path matching and file name matching.

Path Matching

The * matches any folder at that specific level in the path but excludes subfolders, while the double asterisk ** matches subfolders recursively. For example, path/to/* matches path/to/folder1 and path/to/folder2, but not path/to/folder1/subfolder, whereas path/to/** includes all subfolders.

The question mark ? matches any single character. Square brackets [] match any character from a set, similar to regular expressions.

File Name Matching

Specify a pattern for file names to match using standard text with or without wildcards, or file extension matching (like *.pdf).

For example, the pattern matching text *paid* matches any file with a name containing the word 'paid' (case-insensitive).

You can also build an expression to match any single character using ?, or match an array of characters using [].

To match a special character literally, precede it with a backslash and enclose the pair in square brackets. For example, to match a literal ?, use [\?].

A bracket expression matches one character. [a-z]*.csv matches CSV names beginning with a letter, and [^a-z]*.csv matches CSV names beginning with a non-letter. Matching is case-insensitive. Neither pattern restricts the characters matched by the following *.

Curly brackets {} denote parts of a pattern that accept a number of alternatives, separated by commas ,. These alternatives can be literal text or include special characters, including nested curly brackets. For example, *{Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri}* matches any file whose name contains an abbreviated weekday, and 202{6-{0[7-9],1[0-2]},7-0[1-6]}-* matches filenames beginning with a year and month from July 2026 through June 2027, followed by a hyphen. This checks the naming pattern, not whether the day is a valid calendar date.

Full Path and File Name Matching

You can combine path matching together with file name matching.

For example, to match PDF files within a specific subfolder, you can use a pattern like path/to/subfolder/*.pdf.

To match PDF files within any subfolder, whose name contains 2024 or 2025, you can use a pattern like **/*202{4,5}*.pdf.

Precedence

Exclude takes precedence over include. If a file name matches both an Include pattern and an Exclude pattern, the file will be excluded from the sync.