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tiffanywalkEr's avatar
tiffanywalkEr
Helpful | Level 5
17 days ago

Easiest way to transfer files from Dropbox to Google Drive on Windows?

Hey guys,  

So I’ve finally decided to switch over from Dropbox to Google Drive, but now I’m stuck with a mountain of files and folders that I need to move. I’m on Windows, and honestly, the idea of downloading everything from Dropbox and then uploading it all again to Drive sounds like a nightmare (my internet isn’t the fastest either).  

Has anyone here actually done this before? Is there some trick or tool that can make this less painful? Would really appreciate any advice or shortcuts—don’t want to spend my whole weekend staring at progress bars!

3 Replies

  • garrycoach's avatar
    garrycoach
    Helpful | Level 6
    16 days ago

    I went through this headache last year when I was moving all my uni docs and photos from Dropbox to Google Drive. At first, I tried the whole “download from Dropbox, upload to Drive” thing, but my laptop kept running out of space and the process would just randomly stop if my WiFi glitched. Ended up installing both desktop apps and dragging stuff over, but it was still pretty slow, especially with a lot of small files.

    At some point, I tried CloudMounter (just stumbled on it in a forum thread) to connect both accounts as drives. It didn’t magically make things instant, but it was less hassle since I could just move files directly without filling up my hard drive. Still, I had to keep an eye on it because some files would fail to transfer if my connection dropped. If you have a ton of folders, maybe try moving them in smaller batches—seemed to help with errors for me. And definitely double-check that everything copied over, especially shared folders or anything with weird permissions.

  • garrycoach's avatar
    garrycoach
    Helpful | Level 6
    17 days ago

    I had to do this a couple months ago and didn’t really find any magic button, unfortunately. What I ended up doing was installing both the Dropbox and Google Drive desktop apps on my PC, then just copied the folders from the Dropbox folder to the Google Drive one. It still took a while because of my upload speed, but at least I didn’t have to babysit the whole thing.

  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    17 days ago

    Hey tiffanywalkEr, thanks for posting your question to our Community.

    While there's no supported or automatic way to export files from Dropbox directly to third party services like Google Drive, one way to go about this other than downloading the files manually from the Dropbox website to your computer and then uploading them, is the Dropbox desktop app.

    This app will create a Dropbox folder on your computer and will automatically sync the files down to your hard drive.

    From there, after making sure all your files are available offline, you should be able to upload them to Google Drive.

    I'll also leave this thread open in case other users have more tips for you.

    I hope this helps!

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