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Elliott F.1
11 years agoNew member | Level 1
change my dropbox folder name on my PC
I have my dropbox folder in the D drive of my computer. For some reason, the dropbox folder is not named "D:\Dropbox", but "D:\Dropbox (Elliotfan)" with my account name together. Does anybody know how to return the name back to "D:\Dropbox" without messing up the saved files?
Thanks.
Hi Emilio,
I can only confirm what Rich already pointed out.
Dropbox for Business will allow you to access both your personal Dropbox and your work Dropbox from the same computer. To help signify which Dropbox folder is connected to which account, we've chosen to rename the business Dropbox to "Dropbox (business name)." Currently, there is not a way to change the name of this folder back to just "Dropbox".
By default, we place a hidden symlink from Dropbox to the new Dropbox (team name), so you may find that your applications can continue working by accessing this symlink.
However, if this does not work for you, and if you are comfortable creating symbolic links on your machine, there is a workaround that may help you. Please note that this workaround is not supported by our support team, so if you are unable to set up this environment, I'd recommend that instead of using this workaround, you move any files needed by your affected application out of your Dropbox folder instead.
If outside code sources don't cooperate with the space character or parenthesis character, the simplest workaround would be the following:
- pause Dropbox
- remove the hidden symlink at Dropbox
- Rename the "Dropbox (team name)" folder to Dropbox
- Place a symlink at "Dropbox (team name)" that points to "Dropbox"
- Resume syncingThis will allow Dropbox to continue accessing the content through the symlink, and it will allow any external code to use the "Dropbox" folder pathname that doesn't include the additional characters in the path.
I hope this helps!
55 Replies
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- Rufus G.10 years agoNew member | Level 1
I have a related problem. Have had a personal account for a long time and now my employer has moved us to dropbox too so the accounts have been linked on both my home and work PCs. On my work PC my original folder has been renamed Dropbox (personal), but on my home PC it remains just dropbox. That means that any files with links to other files will only work on one or other machine as the path is different depending on which machine I am looking.
- Penny G.110 years agoNew member | Level 1
We've been using the free version of Dropbox for our charity for a while but I also had a personal Dropbox account for photos etc. Recently I found that I could now link the two on one PC and this worked fine - it renamed my work Dropbox with the charity name so it's really clear.
But I've just noticed that I have 3 Dropbox folders showing on the PC - one called Dropbox, one called Dropbox (Down's Heart Group) and one called Dropbox(Personal). When I check the first two appear to have the same files and folders and if I delete a file from one it disappears from the other too. Do I really have two copies of them all or is this a registry.sync error or something?
Probably unconnected but I also added the 'Team Folder' to the work Dropbox about the same time. - Rich10 years ago
Super User II
The one called "Dropbox" is a symbolic link to the other.
From here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/4210
For admins: File and folder paths
- If your team members already have Dropbox installed on their computers, all files and most applications will automatically point to the new work Dropbox folder and subfolders. Dropbox will create a hidden symlink that points to the new Dropbox folder from the old location. Fresh installs don’t require this, as the Dropbox folder is created with the business name from the beginning.
- Penny G.110 years agoNew member | Level 1
Thanks Rich R. That sort of makes sense except it says it applies to Dropbox Business users and we've not upgraded to a Business account.
- Shawn M.1610 years agoNew member | Level 1
My personal account is the only one used on my home computer but Dropbox still insists on naming the folder Dropbox (Personal). It's absolutely ridiculous that I can't rename my Dropbox folder. Stupid crap like that is the reason Dropbox will never see a penny of my money.
- Owen R.110 years agoNew member | Level 1
So is there a solution to this that isn't a symlink now? Since joining dropbox for business many of my scripts no longer work since they receive the path which contains spaces and special characters (even when symlinked). Is there really no way that you can just rename the root folder? How can Dropbox rename it for you and not allow you to change it something else?
- Rich10 years ago
Super User II
So is there a solution to this that isn't a symlink now?
Keep in mind that this is completely unsupported.
- Luke D.610 years agoCollaborator | Level 8
Never liked unsupported hacks. I love these discussions as it can keep a person from making a bad decision. I decided NOT to go with the business version due to so many post outlining the problems with Dropbox Business.
- Justin M.3410 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Like Luke, we are not a fan of the hacks. We are slowly moving off Dropbox Business project to project and have found sync.com business pro to be a great, reliable solution. Have been using that since my initial post above with no problems, and the interface, features and pretty much everything is as nice or nicer than dropbox ( its also notably faster with my ISP too for some unexplainable reason, always had to throttle my dropbox upload speed ) - with the exception of customer support which is notably lacking. Dropbox takes the cake there. We continue to use Dropbox for legacy info, been on it forever, but until they fix this issue it is not the future for any company involved in web or application development that needs control over file paths.
- Ben M.810 years agoNew member | Level 1
OMG - is this for real. It's beyond belief that I can't change the name. I am completely stuck and it appears that having changed the name to simplify working with some unix tools, I'm now facing downloading a TB of data again.
This is bizarre - not least that I have previously changed it in my personal one. ..
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