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Sandhu's avatar
Sandhu
Explorer | Level 4
8 years ago
Solved

Reinstallation of Dropbox after clean install of OS, without Re-downloading all files

Dear Community  Greetings, I had to make a clean install of Mac OS, prior to which i copied all my dropbox folder to an external HD.  I need to reinstall/download the dropbox on my machine but I w...
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  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    8 years ago

    Hey there Sandhu - how are you today?

    As you wish to re-install our desktop app and you do not want to re-download all of your files from the server, you need to choose the "Advanced" setup option during the installation process. Then you need to choose the parent folder of the existing Dropbox folder as the location for this new install.

    For instance, if your old Dropbox folder was added to: C:\Desktop\Dropbox you would need to choose C:\Desktop and the client will try and create a new Dropbox folder. As you'd be connecting with the same Dropbox account as before, Dropbox will detect the existing folder and will then prompt you to merge the Dropbox folder. Upon merging the desktop version of Dropbox will check the existing files and the server versions and update accordingly.

     Please do note that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder or on the web interface while the folder was "offline" will generate conflicted copies.

    I hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions. 

Sandhu's avatar
Sandhu
Explorer | Level 4
8 years ago

Dear Walter,

followinf your suggestion, i got the message that there exist some conflict of the destination folder (my already copied dropbox folder located in the documents directoruy) with icloud. 

Can you assist on this.

Sandhu's avatar
Sandhu
Explorer | Level 4
8 years ago

I will share in the next message,

reading on the forum i get the following reasons 

Conflicting sync icons will appear when each of the following three criteria are true:
  1. You have iCloud enabled on your computer.
  2. You have synced the Desktop or Documents folder to iCloud.
  3. You have moved your Dropbox folder to either the Desktop or Documents folder.

 

i think 3 is the reason, as i moved my old dropbox folder into the documetns folder

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