Why does Dropbox insist on renaming my files?

Thanks for the tip! I will check it out. For this type of thing I normally use one called Bulk Rename Utility (BRU). BRU is a bit complicated to use, so I'm hoping Rename Master is easier.

I will need this sort of utility very soon as I have convinced my brother to stop using Dropbox and switch over to OneDrive and he has a lot of old files from Dropbox that need to be renamed.

I have added him to my OneDrive subscription, so he will have a premium service, free of charge, that's just as good as Dropbox. But the thing is, Dropbox saved him once when his old Galaxy phone just died one day, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason. It still had some battery charge in it when he left it to charge up, and minutes later when he came back to check the status, the phone was no longer responding. It was completely dead. Thankfully he had Camera Upload enabled in Dropbox, so all the photos and videos were safe in the cloud. Samsung took care of the rest with its own cloud, for things like contacts, messages, etc. So when he ordered the latest Galaxy phone he could simply restore all the data. He is therefore very grateful to Dropbox and reluctant to "drop" (let go of) the Dropbox.

This story just shows what an immense value that Camera Upload feature can have! The only issue is, it has now become my job to consolidate all his different "Dropbox, Dropbox (2), Dropbox (3), ..." folders into one, and then merge everything with his old photo collection that's named differently. We're talking about some 2000 files in his Dropbox folders. He was constantly running out of space on Dropbox, so he kept moving those files out to the desktop on the computer, to make room for new photos. Now he has several of those. He's not very technical and so he still doesn't fully understand how this cloud thing works. I was going to buy a Dropbox premium subscription for him, to make it easy on him, giving him a lot more room to play around with. But it's difficult to buy something in someone else's name. And since I have decided to transition to OneDrive, it made more sense that I help him do the same.

So again, thanks for sharing your view and thanks for the tip about Rename Master! I am still hopeful that Dropbox will do the right thing and either allow users to disable this in the settings or expand on this idea (fully implement it) and allow users to make their own naming rules.

Be well and be safe!

Seriously, we have to download another app to get our files named the way we want?  

Why, Dropbox, does everything have to be so corporate?  Corporate, in the sense that Dropbox functions don't make sense, so they need to be explained by tech employees. Often to perfectly intelligent and sometimes very geeky customers --- let's raise our hands! 🙂

I can't believe they still have not fixed this. Unbelievable! That proves me right! They don't want to. They don't have to. So they don't. As simple as that. Good thing I no longer use Dropbox. But I keep getting notifications by e-mail from people that like and comment on this topic. So the problem is still there, and it's still relevant. But Dropbox doesn't care. According to a recent newsletter from February, they are rolling out new toys like "Dropbox Sign" and "DocSend". (I have an idea of what that is, but will likely never need it, and there are likely millions of users who will never use that.) They spread themselves thin by focusing their attention on building these complex new toys that no one asked for, instead of getting the simple things done right. Interesting company... this "Dropbox".

You may look at this new development like "Dropbox Sign" and think the company is growing up, it's finally crawling out of its blue box and thinking outside the box. But I look at this and think it's a company that no longer knows who they are. The whole product offering feels much more bloated and confusing. What started out as a USB flash drive on the web, is now everything but that. For God's sake, they can't even get the file names right! Right? If I copy my files from a mobile phone to a USB flash drive, using a USB OTG cable, I know my file names will not change. But you can't get that with Dropbox. They just have to change up your file names, for your uncalled "convenience". They have all sort of "smartness" built into the app now.

Help!

Is there any other music composer who uses Dropbox that might help me with organization of my files to suit Dropbox?

Seems impossible for me to navigate the file system here.

This is exactly the issue I'm facing with cameras uploads from mobile. (The file name changes upon upload to Dropbox, so I can't easily make sure the files on my phone have actually been backed up.)  This was previously not an issue but now I have a few years of built up files that I don't feel fully confident in deleting because I'm not sure if all of them got backed up or not without manually comparing file sizes. 

I just stumbled upon this issue, too.  Perplexingly, I think Dropbox might have backpropagated some renaming from my device files, too.  The last ones I know were correctly named and synced appear to be from 2022/11/14, but I'd wager I'm just not seeing a more recent "correct" sync. 

This would be less of an issue if the device folders were maintained, but it looks like all files from the selected directories have been synced to "Camera Uploads".  I've got a few years to duplicates to undo now to free my storage and need to figure out how to get back the old file names. 

Fortunately, I've got a few days off to investigate, but oof, this one kinda' hurts.  

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JosephCat wrote:

... I think Dropbox might have backpropagated some renaming from my device files, too.  The last ones I know were correctly named and synced appear to be from 2022/11/14 ...

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The automatic Camera Uploads feature has always renamed photos and videos during upload, and they have always uploaded to the Camera Uploads folder en masse. This is how Camera Uploads is intended to function. Also, It can only rename the files during the upload process. Dropbox/Camera Uploads doesn't (and can't) go back and rename your files later.

A manual upload, where you can select which specific files you wish to upload, will not rename the files and they will be uploaded to the folder you choose. The only time manual uploads would be renamed is if you have an automation or naming convention applied to the folder that you're uploading them to, in which case the files would be renamed based on the rules you've defined for that folder.

Interesting.  Perhaps I only added folder _other_ than the default DCIM recently and just don't remember doing it.  The logs on my system only go back three days, so that's not helpful.  🤔  Perhaps I was syncing other device folders automatically and then added them to the automatic camera upload, too.  That would explain the duplicates and name changes.

EDIT: There does not seem to be a selective sync for mobile, so that theory is out.

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Rich wrote:

The automatic Camera Uploads feature has always renamed photos and videos during upload, and they have always uploaded to the Camera Uploads folder en masse. This is how Camera Uploads is intended to function.

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When a company fails to see the error in their way of doing things, or when it recognizes the error but decides to turn their head the other way: We have been doing it like this since the beginning of time, and we will continue to do so till the end of time.

Hey, happy new year Dropbox! New year; old problem. At least you're consistent and keeping up with your new year's resolution to never change. How long has it been now? Two years? I think more, if you look up other posts about the same topic.

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Rich wrote:

Also, It can only rename the files during the upload process. Dropbox/Camera Uploads doesn't (and can't) go back and rename your files later.

 

A manual upload, where you can select which specific files you wish to upload, will not rename the files and they will be uploaded to the folder you choose. The only time manual uploads would be renamed is if you have an automation or naming convention applied to the folder that you're uploading them to, in which case the files would be renamed based on the rules you've defined for that folder.

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This is not incorrect, but this kind of thinking is flawed. Files can take many turns throughout their lifetime, before they reach their final resting place, in a cold storage (unless they are deleted). Files can be transferred from device A to device B. They can exist in more than one device at the same time! They can be copied from device A to device B and device C. The same file can easily get out of sync if you work on multiple copies on multiple devices.

Those who grew up carrying their school documents around on a USB flash drive remember this well. Then Dropbox appeared, as a sync solution with a whopping 2 GB storage, and a better alternative to a USB flash drive. Common sizes for USB flash drives was 256 MB and 512 MB back then. There were also 1 GB and 2 GB options, but they were not cheap and not cheaper than a free Dropbox account. I should not need to explain this to Dropbox. Keeping files in sync is the whole reason Dropbox came into existence. It's a sync tool, primarily, not a backup solution like so many people confuse it for (and later it was prompted as such).

Using Camera Upload is just one of several ways to transfer or copy files from device A to device B. Should those files ever be transferred back to device A, now with altered file names, then of course you're going to have duplicates! But if the Camera Upload feature of Dropbox app had not altered those file names during "camera upload" (transfer), your operating system would have most likely detected the error in your attempt and that you already have files with the same file names on the system. It would have prompted you to make a decision to either overwrite existing files, or skip the files you're trying to transfer or copy in, or to allow for the duplication to happen (usually with a "(2)" appended to the file name). As a result of Camera Upload altering file names during upload, this checking mechanism fails, on pretty much every operating system including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.

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JosephCat wrote:

Interesting.  Perhaps I only added folder _other_ than the default DCIM recently and just don't remember doing it.  The logs on my system only go back three days, so that's not helpful.  🤔  Perhaps I was syncing other device folders automatically and then added them to the automatic camera upload, too.  That would explain the duplicates and name changes.

EDIT: There does not seem to be a selective sync for mobile, so that theory is out.

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As I noted in my previous comment, files can take many turns throughout their lifetime, before they reach their final resting place, in a cold storage (unless they are deleted). The same file can easily get out of sync if you work on multiple copies on multiple devices. Using Camera Upload is just one of several ways to transfer or copy files from device A to device B. Should those files ever be transferred back to device A, now with altered file names, then of course you're going to have duplicates! But if the Camera Upload feature of Dropbox app had not altered those file names during "camera upload" (transfer), your operating system would have most likely detected the error in your attempt and that you already have files with the same file names on the system. It would have prompted you to make a decision to either overwrite existing files, or skip the files you're trying to transfer or copy in, or to allow for the duplication to happen (usually with a "(2)" appended to the file name). As a result of Camera Upload altering file names during upload, this checking mechanism fails, on pretty much every operating system including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.

In other words, keeping file names consistent throughout their lifetime, is very important. For your own sanity, and to save time, by avoiding having to deal with duplicate files as a result of not having a strict naming convention. Dropbox has a strict naming convention alright, but they have one that they impose on you, whenever you use the Camera Upload feature. This is why I stopped using Dropbox altogether. I did try to persuade them to consider changing this, or at very least letting users decide for themselves if they want to alter file names upon using Camera Upload feature, or not to. But they have stiffly decided not to listen in on what I and others before me have said and complained about in other posts that they downplayed as irrelevant and closed due to inactivity.

However, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by selective sync, but you should be able to selectively upload files from a mobile device to Dropbox. For example when you select a few pictures and a folder that contains PDF documents, and you upload that manually, the file names will be preserved. It's only the Camera Upload feature that automatically and periodically uploads picture files only, that alters file names (on the files as uploaded, not the source files). I don't have Dropbox installed anymore, so I can't verify this, but that's how I remember it.