I have a file name "Northern California" that is shared to various people. It was automatically changed to "northern california" Why did the capital "N" and capital "C" change to lower case?

It would seem that its a long running bug with Dropbox, one which the team have tiptoed around actually admitting exists - the common claim is that Dropbox is case insensitive, which is true enough but it should be case preserving. There have been many questions on the Dropbox forums over the years about mysteriously changing filename cases depending on how the file is accessed (web, API, desktop, mobile etc). In summary, there is no explanation, none was given before, I doubt one will be forthcoming now :)

It is a current issue. Have installed for a client in the last 30 days and over 90 folders have changed case to all lowercase characters which they are none too happy about. All clients have fresh installs of dropbox v3.6.7

All, I too have struggled with this issue. This is particularly problematic when you are trying to organize a bunch of files across collaborators and you end up chasing you tail because your changes get changed back if certain folks access the folder!! (depending on their platform, version of the sync, etc). I can not understand how this is an issue in 2015! This is absolutely ridiculous. Honestly, this is a deal-breaker issue for me and I am going to start looking for an alternative. I can't have filenames being changed or not synced based on the case of the letters. Dropbox you should have spent resources years ago to fix this.

There was a long discussion on this in the old forums (now unfortunately lost), and a bug which caused case-folding appears to have been introduced in earlier experimental builds and was subsequently eliminated a few months ago. It may be possible (I'm guessing) that someone with whom the files are shared is still using one of the affected builds.

I just experienced the same problem. I am running Dropbox for Windows v3.2.6 on two PCs, but I cannot say at which time (i.e. with which version of the Dropbox clients) the error actually occurred. As long as there is no explicit statement from the Dropbox developers which client versions had the error and that it has been removed by now, users should be very careful about using Boxcryptor in connection with Dropbox (I am using Boxcryptor Classic). If file name encryption is enabled in Boxcryptor, changing capital letters to lower case in an encrypted file name will cause Boxcryptor to no longer show the file at all (I guess the file name decryption - checksum verification or similar - fails, and Boxcryptor assumes that the file is not encrypted and will just skip it in its file system view). The encrypted file with the crippled file name still exists, but is no longer directly accessible via Boxcryptor. To make the file accessible again, the encrypted file name has to be changed to a valid one first. This is irritating and inconvenient, and finally the original plaintext file name gets lost (which, depending on the situation, can be also total loss of information). Annoying that this Dropbox problem seems to be quite old, but still hasn't been addressed properly.

Why does the Uppercase Letters of my file name change to Lowercase

14 Replies

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Richard P.
Super User alumni
11 years ago
It would seem that its a long running bug with Dropbox, one which the team have tiptoed around actually admitting exists - the common claim is that Dropbox is case insensitive, which is true enough but it should be case preserving.

There have been many questions on the Dropbox forums over the years about mysteriously changing filename cases depending on how the file is accessed (web, API, desktop, mobile etc).

In summary, there is no explanation, none was given before, I doubt one will be forthcoming now :)
Robert J.
Collaborator | Level 9
11 years ago
There was a long discussion on this in the old forums (now unfortunately lost), and a bug which caused case-folding appears to have been introduced in earlier experimental builds and was subsequently eliminated a few months ago. It may be possible (I'm guessing) that someone with whom the files are shared is still using one of the affected builds.
Arnold
New member | Level 1
11 years ago
I just experienced the same problem. I am running Dropbox for Windows v3.2.6 on two PCs, but I cannot say at which time (i.e. with which version of the Dropbox clients) the error actually occurred.

As long as there is no explicit statement from the Dropbox developers which client versions had the error and that it has been removed by now, users should be very careful about using Boxcryptor in connection with Dropbox (I am using Boxcryptor Classic). If file name encryption is enabled in Boxcryptor, changing capital letters to lower case in an encrypted file name will cause Boxcryptor to no longer show the file at all (I guess the file name decryption - checksum verification or similar - fails, and Boxcryptor assumes that the file is not encrypted and will just skip it in its file system view).

The encrypted file with the crippled file name still exists, but is no longer directly accessible via Boxcryptor. To make the file accessible again, the encrypted file name has to be changed to a valid one first.

This is irritating and inconvenient, and finally the original plaintext file name gets lost (which, depending on the situation, can be also total loss of information).

Annoying that this Dropbox problem seems to be quite old, but still hasn't been addressed properly.
Richard K.15
Explorer | Level 3
11 years ago
It is a current issue. Have installed for a client in the last 30 days and over 90 folders have changed case to all lowercase characters which they are none too happy about. All clients have fresh installs of dropbox v3.6.7
JOE K.17
11 years ago
3.8.8 also has the problem.

No encryption involved: it happened when one set of folders was moved locally.
Shawn S.5
New member | Level 1
11 years ago
All, I too have struggled with this issue. This is particularly problematic when you are trying to organize a bunch of files across collaborators and you end up chasing you tail because your changes get changed back if certain folks access the folder!! (depending on their platform, version of the sync, etc). I can not understand how this is an issue in 2015! This is absolutely ridiculous. Honestly, this is a deal-breaker issue for me and I am going to start looking for an alternative. I can't have filenames being changed or not synced based on the case of the letters. Dropbox you should have spent resources years ago to fix this.
Martin I.3
New member | Level 1
11 years ago
It's happening on Synology DSM Cloud Sync for Dropbox as well. One folder appears in the cloud (in the correct mixed case) but I get 2 folders with their contents duplicated on the Synology server - one in all lower case and one with the correct upper/lower case. I was not aware that this was a long standing problem until now. The rest of the computers are Macs which all work well.
Xin X.1
New member | Level 1
10 years ago
Is this problem solved? I still encounter the same issue. The file is named "NUVHdSf-Tau.pdf", but on Dropbox server, it says "nuvhdsf-tau.pdf". How to resolve this?
maxkaps
New member | Level 2
9 years ago
I am experience the same issue with API v2 and WEB UI - it happense with the folder name.
jadecomputers
New member | Level 2
9 years ago
My problem is that when I signed the report, it changes the file name to lower case when DB syncs to the server. All the guys sharing the files will get the lower case file name but my file name stays on the upper case.

Apparently, DB has to be paused before signing the report so that when it syncs again it won't change it to lower case. When I did that, DB did not change the upper case to lower case anymore.