Our Community is in read-only mode until April 8th, learn more here. You can still search existing threads or get help via Dropbox Support, the Dropbox Help Center, or Learn.
Forum Discussion
macOS File Provider: Dropbox cannot relink to existing CloudStorage folder
Application Affected Dropbox on Windows PC and iMac Sequoia Device Windows PC and iMac Sequoia Operating System/Browser (if using the web) Latest Windows, iOS 15.7.4 After a routine rest...
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHey aknyc - based on your first message, it sounds like you might have selected the Dropbox folder itself and not the location containing your Dropbox folder in the first place. Can you send us a full screenshot the folder you're selecting when trying to relink to your existing Dropbox folder to make sure we're on the same page?
When it comes to your devices getting unlinked, could you have a look at your security page and let me know if you still see them listed in your connected devices?
While we're at it, note that at this point you can also create the new folder and either have everything as online only as the default and make your files local when needed (to avoid doing it all at once) or reconnect and make the new Dropbox folder, pause the syncing process, and copy the files over to the new folder to just index rather than fully re-sync.
In any case, please keep us posted on your progress.
Hi Walter,
Thanks — this is very helpful.
On your first point, I can confirm that I am selecting the parent folder: /Users/xyz/Library/CloudStorage and not the Dropbox folder itself.
Just to clarify one point, in my case there hasn’t actually been an option to “relink” to the existing folder. The only options presented by the client have been to either rename the existing Dropbox folder or choose another location, in which case it attempts to create a new Dropbox folder inside the selected directory. There doesn’t appear to be a path that allows the client to directly adopt the existing CloudStorage folder.
On the devices point, I checked the security page and can confirm that the two devices appear to be linked, one multiple times (snip attached).
Your suggestion to create a new folder, pause syncing, and copy the files over so Dropbox indexes rather than fully re-syncs is exactly what I was hoping to confirm. Given that I already have ~521 GB locally, avoiding a full re-download would be ideal.
I had three follow-up questions:
First, just to confirm — is there truly no supported way for the Dropbox client to directly reattach to the existing File Provider folder at /Users/xyz
/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox?
Second, do you have any sense of what might have caused both my Mac and Windows devices to lose authentication at roughly the same time? Around that time I may have been prompted to create a passkey when logging into Dropbox on the web (not entirely sure if it was just before or after), so I’m wondering if that could have triggered a broader credential reset.
Finally, for the copy/re-index approach, is it generally reliable that Dropbox will recognize the files via hashing and avoid re-uploading/downloading, assuming syncing is paused during the copy?
Thanks again — really appreciate the guidance.
- Neal
Community Manager
Hi aknyc,
I followed up internally and here's what our team said for those three questions:
-
This is supposed to work (and worked when we just tested it), but for some reason it didn't work in your case, and we're not entirely sure why--it looks like something might have gone wrong on one of the attempts, and then the unlink cookie was removed. Without the unlink cookie, we'll no longer attempt to reconnect to the old domain. So however you got into this state, at this point I don't think reconnecting is an option anymore, unfortunately.
-
I'm still following up on this and will update you once I have an answer!
- Theoretically that should work since we should be to tell the files are the same to avoid spinning out conflicts. It should avoid the uploads as long as the Engine treats the files as the same and doesn't see differences that it thinks it needs to sync.
-
