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Forum Discussion
Logged out of the Dropbox app and back in and now I have a 'Dropbox (old)' and a 'Dropbox' folder
Application Affected
Synching files
Device
PC
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Windows 11
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
Windows Desktop
Question or Issue
Had a funny problem with the Windows Explorer status icons not all being corrected, and saw a recommended to "simply" sign out of Dropbox and sign back in. Simple enough. Which I did.
I then got a pop up asking me (telling me really) to rename my Dropbox folder. I said OK, and I now have a Dropbox and Dropbox (old) in the User directory. All of my files are in (old). None are in new. Every link on my PC to my old files is now of course broken. I paused syncing because I am worried Dropbox is going to try and create an entirely new copy of all of my files in the new Dropbox folder.
Does anyone know what it going on here? And how to put things back to they way they were before? Why on earth would a logout/login totally reorganize all of my files???
I'm kind of dead in the water right now so any help would be greatly appreciated. Dropbox support seems to be non-existent.
12 Replies
At some point in the past few weeks, I was automatically logged out of my Dropbox account. When prompted to log back in, the app setup process began as if the Dropbox app was not already installed on my system. I tried force quitting the app and restarting my computer, but this didn't solve the issue.
I tried following the prompts. I was presented with a message stating that I already had a Dropbox folder set up on my machine. The menu didn't provide me with the option to use the existing Dropbox folder. Instead, it only offered that I rename my original folder something else, or choose a different location (same menu the OP screenshotted above).
Ultimately I uninstalled Dropbox causing my existing indexed folder to become hidden. When I reinstalled Dropbox, it created a new Dropbox Folder on my main boot (C:) drive (my original folder stayed hidden on my larger (D:) drive). When Dropbox was installed, I tried re-assigning the new Dropbox folder to my (D:) drive, but the app would immediately crash, I assume because it saw the other Dropbox folder there.
Ultimately I resorted to renaming the original folder "Dropbox (old)" and allowing the Dropbox app to create a new Dropbox folder on the same drive. My Dropbox (old) folder contains 1.25 TB of data, 522GB of which is on my local disk. There are 71,000 files and 5,900 folders. I'm wary of the process of re-indexing this data to the new Dropbox folder.
It should be noted that, unlike OP, I'm not being repeatedly logged out. My primary concern is the possibility that some of my files on my Dropbox (old) folder haven't been uploaded and synced, and will be lost if I allow the new Dropbox folder to overwrite it. Why can't I simply reconnect my existing Dropbox folder to my online account? Why does the app not allow for this? This is the first time something like this has happened. Dropbox has worked really well for me up until this point. But this breakdown in functionality feels bordering on catastrophic, especially if I were in the middle of a project (thankfully I am not). If there's not a clear way to proceed, I will probably just move my data to my GDrive account and call it quits with DB.- Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi aloom127, you can reconnect an existing Dropbox folder by performing an advanced reinstallation of the Dropbox desktop application, and following the last steps in this article to link your old Dropbox folder
