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dsm5's avatar
dsm5
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago

Dropbox has taken over files into my PC, and how I can restore them

I bought a new PC a couple of years ago and decided it would be a good idea to install Dropbox.  I am not a techie and somehow every single document and file that I have created, despite being saved ...
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Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
3 years ago
anonymous wrote:
Like why did the formatting even change if these files are mine to begin with? Why does dropbox need to do that ...

Dropbox didn't do anything, and your files didn't change their formatting. This message typically happens when copying files from one file system, such as NTFS which is the default for Windows, to another file system, such as FAT32, which is a common format of many flash drives, for compatibility reasons.

 

The service involved, be it Dropbox, OneDrive or even just a regular file copy, doesn't matter and has nothing to do with it. Read the page I linked to for a better understanding of what a file system is, how formats differ, and the compatibility issues when copying files between them.

anonymous's avatar
anonymous
3 years ago

Thanks. I'd actually seen that article before but didn't realize that Dropbox doesn't somehow have to do with one of the different file systems mentioned, since I thought it had something to do with my problem (I've never encountered it before with other cloud services). I'd also read responses in the forum and elsewhere in which they attributed it to whether Dropbox backup was enabled or not. That was actually the response I got from a Dropboxer on this forum. So if this is likely a Windows-flash drive compatibility issue, do you have any advice on how I can save the properties of my files, save for converting the destination drive? I'm not very computer literate (use my pc for basics - eg browsing the internet, watching streaming platforms, creating docs for work that are basically Word/Excel/PowerPoint kind of docs) and I'm hesitant to try any conversion workarounds and such.

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