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Dropbox Migration to a New Mac With the New Cloud Storage Setup
On my primary computer, I keep all Dropbox files in offline mode. I've updated to the new Dropbox setup that places the Dropbox folder in ~/Library/CloudStorage. I'm wondering what will happe...
Got it! Thanks--that makes sense.
Can I suggest that your development people review this and see if it's possible to update the Dropbox application at some point in the future so these steps are no longer necessary. The way things worked BEFORE the current change was simpler and less time-and-bandwidth consuming: You just had to run the standard Apple migration, and and then connect the new computer to your Dropbox account (no reinstallation necessary). At that point Dropbox would update its indexing without requiring re-download of the Dropbox contents.
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorSorry to jump in here, fssbob.
I understand where you're coming from, so a way to avoid this, if you'll no longer be using your old computer, would be the following:
- Before the migration, unlink the old computer from Dropbox. This will disconnect it from your account.
- Delete the Dropbox app and the Dropbox folder from the old computer. You're safe to do this, as long as the computer is unlinked.
- Proceed with the migration
- Install the Dropbox application on the new computer and sign in to your account.
So, after my previous failed attempt to transfer from my old MacBook Pro (2019) to my new MacBook Pro (2021), I followed your steps this weekend. I think they would benefit from a few more details, as I still had a few heart-in-mouth moments pressing delete, and some of the steps didn't align exactly with what I was expecting.
For example, after I had done the transfer, I installed the Dropbox app on my new MacBook Pro and the first message I got on opening was, "Your Dropbox account (1,343.2 GB) is too large to fit on this computer (617.9 GB remaining). To continue, choose which folders you want to sync to this computer. The rest of your files are available on dropbox.com."
[Choose folders] [Sync everything]
I had been hoping that it would just replicate the status of my old MacBook Pro ā if a file was synced locally before, it would be synced locally now. And I was unclear exactly what was meant by [Sync everything]. Everything?? I thought there wasn't enough room? I wasn't sure what the consequences were if I was to click it.
So I clicked [Choose folders] but all the folders were ticked, and the [Update] button was greyed out, so I clicked [Close], and the window disappeared and I got a message saying, "There's an issue opening Dropbox files while they're online-only. Right now, some apps on your Mac might have trouble opening online-only files. You can always open Dropbox files by double-clicking them in Finder. Everything else is working as usual, and we've got a fix in progress."
Which was fine, that's been the whole issue for many years. So I clicked [Got it] and then... nothing seemed to happen. I clicked on the Dropbox folder in the sidebar, and it was completely empty. I started to panic, but then a second later the folders appeared, although they were empty. So I clicked on the Dropbox icon up top and thankfully saw the status was syncing many thousands of files and it said it would take an hour or so.
So I let it do its thing and finally it said "All your files are up to date", but not a single file is synced locally. Every single file is online. And I'm now having to go through file after file, manually syncing files locally and repairing broken links.
So I'm guessing I should have clicked [Sync everything]? Would that have downloaded onto my new MacBook anything that had been downloaded on the old one?
Apologies for the very long message. Thanks for your time.
