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How do I rename the root folder?

How do I rename the root folder?

Stephen G.5
New member | Level 1
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I recently joined Dropbox for Business on a trial basis. As part of the process, it forcefully renames your Dropbox folder to "Dropbox (Personal)". I have since decided not to use Dropbox for Business. Although I now only have one dropbox folder, it is still called "Dropbox (Personal)" - it did not automatically change back when the accounts were unlinked.

How do I get Dropbox to change the name back?

24 Replies 24

Steve G.61
Helpful | Level 5
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That works nicely. Thanks.

I agree about the OS X behavior being wrong.

DaveC2
New member | Level 1
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Technically, no, there isn't. Dropbox will always use a space and parenthesis in the name for team accounts. However, see the response from a Dropboxer in the following post for a possible workaround.

^

Will must say that was interesting to find out, and in essence means YES you can rename the folder to ANY name (I just did) as long as you establish a symbolic link folder using the DROPBOX (BIZ NAME) (or personal etc) to point to that location. (I moved and renamed mine)

I wonder if this is something DB had to work on to perform, IE detect its a symbolic link and follow it, or if the Notification service resolves this to the truepath on enrolling?

Fernando Henriq1
New member | Level 1
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I've just tried the Team Dropbox Account and the Personal changed the name

As i read above and also did, doesn't work to disconnect from Team Account to reset the Personal name to "Dropbox" again.

It has become such a pain. None a single program finds the files because of the name changing and worse, the headache of all headaches. Programs I write and LaTeX reports must have no accents, no spaces and so on, on path and file names.

I'm on a crossfire between, OR rearrange a huge amount of data because libraries and sources are on a specific folder other than the file that use it, OR find the best solution to rename Dropbox.

The UNLINK and RELINK options seems to work fine if Mr. Luis M. is correct.

 

And WHY?! OH WHY?! Did the Dropbox Team decided that the best way was to change the folder's name without asking me first?

And worse, insert a !damm! space on it? It is like to break the most important rule/constraint of all files and programs I use/write.

DO_NOT_USE_ACCENTS_OR_SPACES_IF_A_PROGRAM_NEEDS_TO_POINT_IT.

RuThaN
New member | Level 2
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These solutions are simply very user unfriendly, pleas simply rename button right beside Move button..

   Im needing this feature maybe 3 years.. Its not too much, simply possiblity of  change one stupid string..

GBatteries E.
New member | Level 1
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Same here - biggest pain with added spaces in the folder name (i.e. existing LabVie .exe files does not allow for it...)

 

The easiest solution was to create a virtual drive and point to the folder by running cmd:

C:\>subst b: "C:\Users\Jonathan\Dropbox (Company)"

Cody B.6
New member | Level 1
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I'm having trouble with this issue as well. I'm writing markdown documents in Mou, and I can't point to an image file in dropbox because it can't handle the spaces or parenthesis that are in the name of the root folder. Any word of fixing this?

Fernando Henriq1
New member | Level 1
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to Cody B.

look this discussion page:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201852169-change-my-dropbox-folder-name-on-my-...

There are a few methods for it. One of them is the one I did and solved my problem.

Justin M.34
Helpful | Level 5
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Cross Post from this thread: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201852169-change-my-dropbox-folder-name-on-my-...

New to Dropbox business. 

REALLY unfortunate to read through these forums and find these hacky, unsupported workaround answers. Especially after having what I would honestly consider excellent customer support from the Dropbox team helping me strategize and transition all our Pro accounts to a unified Business account.

As a web developer, I finally got all my synching done ( took 2 days to get all synced up, 250gb/700k files ). And today I finally get back into some coding, running into errors left and right - only to track them back to the space in the Dropbox folder name.

So... any other options besides a symlink? That solution is unacceptable for us. 

And as a technology company - Dropbox should KNOW BETTER than to force a folder name with spaces AND special characters. That is day one dum dum stuff for anyone who works on a computer for a living. Whomever came up with the brilliant idea of naming a business folder 'Dropbox (Company)' should be let go immediately. My biggest fear is that, developers weren't questioned and some suits and project managers thought it would just 'look pretty' with a space and parens. Ugh.

Will be calling support tomorrow. Without a direct workaround, sorry Dropbox - you've got a good product and great customer support, but you screwed the pooch at the most basic level with this naming convention. 

Rich
Super User II
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We don't need multiple threads for the same issue (or duplicate replies on both). To continue discussing this please refer to the following thread:

 

Thank you.

davidhere40
New member | Level 2
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I have a much better solution. I have over 50GB of data in my dropbox. So even the solution where I reinstall to get the default folder name wasn't acceptable to me. So I found a great work around. Just create a symbolic "hard link". I had never used one before, but it's supported but all windows, linux and mac. Here is how I created the link:

 

1) Open a cmd prompt as admin. (Search for cmd.exe, right click and then click run as administrator)

2) Execute: mklink /J "C:\Dropbox" "C:\Dropbox (Personal)"

 

Now you can use "C:\Dropbox" (or whatever location you decided on) to interact with the same files as if you had typed in C:\Dropbox (Personal). All software and programs will now treat it as if the folder were located there 🙂 The best part is that this solution is easy, fast and doesn't have any downsides.

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