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amberprawn's avatar
amberprawn
New member | Level 2
4 years ago

Lost access to Desktop folder on Mac when I downloaded Dropbox, and now can't access.

I've lost access to the Desktop, Documents and Downloads file on my mac - help??

I just set up a new Dropbox account with a different email. When it asked whether I wanted to sync/back-up Desktop, Documents and Downloads folders, I said no, because when I did this with a previous account, this caused problems. I thought that this would mean that my Desktop files etc would just remain on my hard drive, and I would have a Dropbox folder with things I wanted to back up to the cloud.

But this has caused all the icons to disappear from my Desktop!

Luckily the files are still there when I search for them. When I got to Desktop folder in Finder and click on it, a message says 'The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “Desktop” can’t be found.'
 
Logging out of Dropbox didn't help.
 
Help???
Computer Backup
desktop
Dropbox Backup
Dropbox Basic
Mac
Setting up the apps

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  • bahartug's avatar
    bahartug
    New member | Level 2
    4 years ago

    Hi, couple days ago while i was working on my laptop, out of hell all my desktop and documents was gone. I did nothing but everything disappeared. 

    I have a macbook, so a talked about 3 hours now with apple support, and end the end they told me that this is a dropbox problem. 

    Alltough I don't use dropbox so often, it is installed on my macbook. On my dropbox itself I have very old data which is just saved there since years. For my laptop I don't have a back up there. 

    Nevertheless, now I can open my documents file nor my desktop. I can't save anything there everything is locked. Even the alias. 

    As I wrote above, we tried everything and it should be a dropbox problem. I want my data back which deleted themselfes out of nothing.

     

    Kindly,

    Bahar

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    4 years ago

    Hi Drpdmc, I'd be happy to help! 

     

    It seems you might have enabled Computer backup. Can you follow these steps, in order to disable it? 

     

    Let me know how it goes! 

  • Drpdmc's avatar
    Drpdmc
    Explorer | Level 3
    4 years ago

    Help! Downloaded Dropbox and promptly lost everything on my desktop! I'm using a MacBook Pro with up to date Monterey OS. Now I remember why I previously vowed never to use dropbox again - it steals everything and the customer support is abysmal!

     

    Please help, my desktop items show up under Finder but my desktop screen is blank

    Paul

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    4 years ago

    Hi amberprawn, let's jump right into this! 

     

    Can you have a look at these steps, and check if the feature is enabled on your device? If it is, can you disable it? 

     

    Also, feel free to send me some  screenshots of the error you receive on your end, since that'd be interesting to see. 

     

    Looking forward to hearing back from you!

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