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noku's avatar
noku
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago
Solved

"Need to change permissions for the folder" when starting up the app

I get this annoying message every time I boot up my Mac: "dropbox needs to change permissions for the folder: Users/......" How do I stop it?

I have read and write permissions for the folder and am the only user on this Mac.

  • Hi noku, thanks for the info.

    Could you forward a screenshot of this error message? Does it also give you an error log in the blue text?

    If not, it's possible that some files or folders have different permissions because they are using symlinks, which could have different permissions.

    You can check if you have any on your account by following the steps in section 7 here.

    Let us know how it goes!

4 Replies

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  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    7 years ago

    Hi noku, thanks for the info.

    Could you forward a screenshot of this error message? Does it also give you an error log in the blue text?

    If not, it's possible that some files or folders have different permissions because they are using symlinks, which could have different permissions.

    You can check if you have any on your account by following the steps in section 7 here.

    Let us know how it goes!

  • noku's avatar
    noku
    Explorer | Level 4
    7 years ago

    I was backing up WINE apps (they are Windows apps) to Dropbox, which I didn't realize, and those often have some odd file permissions and attributes. I've stopped that backup and I'm assuming that was the issue. If not, I'll be back. Thanks for the tips, it is most appreciated.

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    7 years ago

    No worries, let me know if you have any further issues! :)

  • noku's avatar
    noku
    Explorer | Level 4
    7 years ago

    I stopped the sync process - stopped backing up these files to my Dropbox folder - but three days later and they have not yet synced (and the permission message persists). They are are tiny text files that shouldn't take more than a few seconds to sync. So I suspect their permission are an issue and I deleted them. Let's see if that fixed things.

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