Change Dropbox folder location

[Silvia K.4]

Hi, I am using Dropbox Plus on a Win7-PC. Since my C:/-drive ran out of space, I wanted to change the Dropbox location to F:/. This worked, but Dropbox created a subfolder also named Dropbox. I am not English mothertongue, so pls. bear with me when explainig a litte complicated.

My local folder now looks like this:   F:/Dropbox/Dropbox. I want to get rid of the subfolder, so locally I moved the whole content of "f:/dropbox/dropbox" to "f:/dropbox". To sync that with the Dropbox externally, I went to go the account settings and clicked "move". When I try to fill in f:/dropbox, I get the message "error with selected folder - this folder already contains a dropbox directory."

Can anyone explain how I can get this issue solves please? I do not want to synchronize before this problem is solved.

Thanks in advance.

[Andy · Accepted solution]

When you move the folder via the option in the preferences, Dropbox moves the folder automatically without you having to do anything. The best course of action is probably to move it somewhere outside of all of that.

Move it somewhere like F:\Temp (it creates a Dropbox folder, so this will put it in F:\Temp\Dropbox), let it move everything, and wait until it's synced. From there, if anything is left in F:\Dropbox, make copies if you wish, or delete it (but make absolute sure it's fully synced to F:\Temp first!!), and then once you have that completely gone - that is, you've completely deleted F:\Dropbox, not just emptied it - go back into the Dropbox client preferences, and change the location back to F:\, which should create the F:\Dropbox folder, and move everything over.

Once everything has then synced back to F:\Dropbox, you can delete the F:\Temp folder if it still remains.

[ettorea]

That's OK but how can I do if I want to get rid of the appended "Dropbox" folder? I want to sync everything under, let's say, "D:\mycloud" and NOT under "D:\mycloud\Dropbox" . Is it possible? ... I do hope so 😉

[Ngan B.]

Move your Dropbox to D drive --> D:\Dropbox then try to rename Dropbox --> "mycloud".

[Cicero101]

Hi, I have an SSD and a hard drive on my laptop. The SSD is the C drive and contains the WIN OS as usual. Dropbox appears to default to C:users/X/Dropbox when installed. My SSD drive is now overloaded by the size of the Dropbox folder and I want to move it from the C drive to the D hard drive.

This answer looks like it might be the solution but I cannot find "the option in the preferences" you refer to or "the Dropbox client preferences" you refer to in your answer. The only preferences option I can find is that shown in the attached photo and none of those tabs have anything of this kind.

Can you confirm I'm on the right track with this way of moving the Dropbox folder from C to D drive. And if so steer me to the way to do it?

Thanks in advance.

[Rich]

You're looking at the Preferences for your forum account; not the Dropbox application.

• https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/change-preferences

[llm3000]

sorry man not trying to be rude, but that sounds very silly and old fashion like moving inbetween hardisk. And i suppose the original idea to signing up on dropbox is trying to work smart..... the thing is, the OP (and i having the same issue) is just trying to relink the existing folder which if dropbox is smart enough, then we can simply point it back to the original folder location without having to go thru all the relocation and syncing, cause the tons of files are already there.    

[comfort]

How is this 'Solved'?  it's not. 

I wish Dropbox would have taken the time the last 10 YEARS or so to implement the simple action of pointing to your existing DB folder, instead of forcing to start over, getting the welcome to dropbox stuff, creating a new folder and then having to manually do a workaround. 

10 YEARS guys!

Congratulations