Copy Dropbox directory from old Mac to new.

[webbified]

Hi everyone, first time poster here.

I'm currently in the process of setting up my wife's new Mac and she has 400gb of work files on the cloud and even with a half decent fibre connection it's still (understandably) taking days. I wondered if there was an alternative (quicker) method? I realise it's probably not just a simple case of copying the files from the dropbox folder on one mac to the other. I notice KristinJoys posted a similar issue on another thread back in October but it was never resolved - any advice appreciated, otherwise I'll stick with the slooooooow sync!

OS on old Mac is Big Sur 11.6.5 & new Mac is Ventura 13.2.1.

Cheers,

W

[Megan]

Hi @webbified, I'd be happy to answer this one for you! 

Keep in mind that in order to prevent any unexpected behavior, we'd recommend allowing the Dropbox desktop application to sync the files from the site directly when migrating to a new Mac.

However, there's an alternative to this. You'd need to pause the Dropbox app on the new device, and quit it too. Now, you can copy the Dropbox folder from the old device, into the new Mac. 

Then, and after you sign into the app again on the new device, before you click on "Open my Dropbox folder", you should see an "Advanced Settings" link. Please click there and try to choose the syncing location for your Dropbox folder. 

You'd choose the path that you used in order to place your Dropbox folder, and let it sync the content from scratch.  For your Mac it'd be something like: OSX: /Users/<yourUserName>/Dropbox (such as /Users/Robert/Dropbox)

If you had your Dropbox folder in a different location make sure to choose the root folder path that Dropbox used to have, for example, if you have your Dropbox folder in the path "D:\OtherDrive\Folder\Dropbox (Team)" you'll want to select the folder "D:\OtherDrive\Folder".

I hope this clarifies!

[webbified]

Hi Megan,

Thank you for the quick reply and for providing a solution. I'm a little nervous to mess things up and upset the status quo, re current sync so I may follow your recommendation and leave it going for now...until I run out of patience anyway!

[Megan · Accepted solution]

Awesome @webbified.

Do that and if you need anything else, just give me a shout!