Dropbox silently moved my Dropbox folder and enrolled me in a beta program without asking!

Nancy I appreciate your response but this is not enough. I've been a Dropbox user since 2012 and a paying Dropbox Pro customer since 2017. Offering a solution is great, but I need answers.

Specifically I'd like to understand the following:

1. What was supposed to happen? Surely the engineers who designed this change must have a plan in mind for how it would be rolled out in a non-disruptive manner. How was the change intended to be deployed seamlessly, without forking users' data into two separate copies? What was the planned approach? How was this meant to work?
2. What went wrong? So many things went wrong. Failure to notify me that this change was coming. Failure to obtain my consent before enrolling me into a new beta program. Failure to inform me that the sync model had changed. Failure to inform me that my Dropbox folder had moved. Failure to maintain a single source of truth and have a single copy of my data on macOS. How could this change have so many failures on so many levels?
3. What are you doing to make sure it won't happen again? What are the lessons learned at Dropbox to make sure this kind of disruption won't happen again in future?

I'd like this issue to be escalated to your engineering leadership. I'd like to have answers to the above questions. I am so unhappy about this.

When it comes to fixing the issue, your suggestion makes sense but it raises further questions:

1. If I merge my changes into the "new" Dropbox folder, will I still be enabled in a "Beta" program? I never consented to be in a Beta program. I want to use use fully-tested production-ready software ONLY.
2. Why do all the files in the new Dropbox location have cloud icons beside them? It looks like they're not downloaded locally. I just tried turning off Wi-Fi to see if these files open, and they don't. So these files are currently only in the cloud. They're downloaded dynamically on-demand.

This is a seriously breaking change! If I switch to the new Dropbox folder, this will mean:

• My Time Machine backups will no longer contain my data, since all the local files are now empty cloud icons
• My ad-hoc local drive backups using SuperDuper will no longer contain my data, since all the local files are now empty cloud icons
• My continuous/versioned cloud backups using Arq Backup no longer contain my data, since all the local files are now empty cloud icons

It's crucial to understand that I have multiple levels of backup in place to ensure my data is adequately protected - and ALL these backup solutions assume that my data exists locally on my computer. I'm only using Dropbox for one purpose: to sync my data between devices. But ALL my data must continue to exist locally.

If Dropbox now decides to replace my files with empty cloud icons that only download dynamically/on-demand, then my entire data backup regime stops working! Everything becomes broken! This is not a solution. My data exists locally on my machine and everything starts from there. The sync service (Dropbox) only exists to sync my data between devices.

If you can no longer guarantee that my data stays on my device, then I can no longer be a Dropbox user. I need my data to exist on my device in order for all the other backup processes (Time Machine, ad-hoc local drive backups, Arq cloud backups) to continue working.

I'll stop there but I really need someone to THINK THIS THROUGH and understand the impact of these changes and give me a real solution that actually works!

Thanks Nancy, I don't know how I joined the beta program, I have no recollection of that.

Is the beta program currently tied to Dropbox for macOS on File Provider - i.e. do I have to be on the beta program to use Dropbox for macOS on File Provider for now? Or are they independent?

In the meantime, I contacted Arq Support to ask about how backup works when files are managed using Apple's File Provider API. They said that Arq 7.21 now includes the ability to either "ignore" or "materialize" dataless files. If I choose "materialize", Arq will force the files to be downloaded before backing them up. This is great news, as it sounds like someone has at least thought about how these two capabilities (sync and backup) work together. They also confirmed that Arq will de-duplicate the data backed up from both the new Dropbox location and the old Dropbox location, as long as they're part of the same Arq backup plan. This is important as it means my Arq storage costs won't suddenly double as a result of the Dropbox folder move!

Since I have 500 GB of data and 120,000 files, I don't really want to re-download everything to the new Dropbox folder. This is partly due to time, but also because I have concerns about preservation of metadata (including file creation/modification timestamps: in the past I've seen this metadata change when recovering data via Dropbox, not sure if the File Provider model is different in that respect?)

Given these concerns, what I'd really like to do is the following:

1. Temporarily stop using the Dropbox for macOS on File Provider, and point Dropbox at my old Dropbox folder
2. Let Dropbox automatically upload all the changes I've made in macOS over the last 11 days from my old Dropbox folder to the Dropbox cloud. The changes I've made on other devices should be preserved as they all involve separate files, thankfully, so there should be no conflicts. 
3. When the time is right, re-initiate migration to Dropbox for macOS on File Provider - but this time, do it in the correct way as you described, so that my existing data is moved to the new location in a controlled manner, rather than everything being re-downloaded
4. Configure Arq to "materialize" dataless files, as described above
5. Add the new Dropbox folder to my existing Arq backup plan

By doing it this way, it will ensure that (a) all my file metadata is preserved correctly; (b) I avoid re-downloading 500 GB of data; and (c) the data in my new Dropbox folder continues to get backed up correctly.

Do you think this plan should work - and if so, how do I perform steps 1 and 3?

As a side note, I think it's important for the folk at Dropbox to understand that Dropbox doesn't exist in a vacuum. It needs to co-exist with other needs - in particular, the ability to back up the same datasets using a variety of 1st and 3rd-party tools. When you move the Dropbox folder to a new location and change the sync model, that can be a seriously disruptive change from that perspective, and needs to be handled very carefully.

Nancy Yes please open a ticket if it helps to answer these questions.