Syncing documents folder in Mac OS 10.14

[Sequoyah]

So now that Dropbox has decided to FUBAR the way we use symlinks in dropbox, I am left wondering how to sync my "Documents folder. I am willing to move the folder into Dropbox, however, it seems that isn't possible as I can only copy it over and am left with two copies as I can't delete the original folder. I also would like to create a symlink in my user folder to replace the documents folder.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to make this work?

[Lusil]

Hey there @Sequoyah, 

I'd be more than happy to help!

In general, it's recommended that you move the actual data into the Dropbox folder, and then create a symlink where the data was previously located.

That way, the symlink is outside of the Dropbox folder, but the data will sync inside of it. 

You can find more information about symlinks in this article. 

Hope this helps!

[Sequoyah]

Lusil,

Thanks for the response. I think I figured it out.

I basically just created a documents folder in Dropbox and copied the contents over from the Documents folder, hid that folder from the sidebar in the finder and created a symlink back to the User folder.  Not ideal but it works. It might be worth mentioning somewhere that the Documents folder in the User folder can't be deleted.

Thanks again for the response.

[Lusil · Accepted solution]

Thanks for getting back to me, @Sequoyah. 

Sounds like you're on the right track - awesome work! 

The Documents folder on your User's path should be one of the default folders placed there by the OS, which may explain why you're able to hide it but not remove it.

In any case, if you have any other questions, just give me a nudge. 

In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely day ahead! 

[psifertex]

Every time I reboot I find that my documents folder has been reset -- do you also have this problem? I'm doing:

cd ~/
sudo mv Documents Documents-native
ln -s ~/Dropbox/Documents .

[Lusil]

Hi there @psifertex, thanks for nudging us on this thread!

Could it be that the Documents folder has any third party apps or files associated with a third party app that acts like a database by any chance? 

Keep me posted!

[psifertex]

Hmm, not that I know of but there's a lot of things in it. I specifically notice because Alfred warns me that its settings on ~/Documents/ are gone on boot. I'm happy to run some more detailed diagnostic if that would help, I'm quite comfortable in a command-line.