Hi Fearg
I can only reiterate what clawlamont said - this should have been an opt-in feature. Or alternatively a feature that was publicised as 'Do you want to do this now?' - bit like Windows 10 update.
The least it could have done was to say 'this will take an enormous amount of time and will leave you with misplaced files, unusable PC while its moving and a time overhead needed to fix everything once the change has been made.
I spoke with UK support today and they said that we were informed this would happen - but we just received emails saying:
15 Dec: 'Starting December 15, 2016, improved team folders will be enabled for all Dropbox Business teams'
16 Dec: 'We've changed your folder name from xxxx to Team Folders' - the folder named xxx was the shared name in the root folder'
17 Dec: 'Now available to all Dropbox Business and Enterprise teams, team folders’
UK support also said that this move was a benefit to Dropbox users...
so far I haven’t seen a benefit and had to work the weekend before the UK Christmas holidays and I suspect will now also have to work over the Christmas holidays because I still can't use my PC.
Nowhere in these emails does it say: ‘When we rename your folder it will:
- delete everything locally
- remove your personal synching preferences
- attempt to download all cloud storage
- leave some files where they were because they were in conflict
- virtually bring PC usage to a standstill for what has so far been three days and counting
– make your hard disk thrash like crazy while we try to download the complete contents of your cloud storage account
- overload your CPU
- bring a user's PC to it's knees because the cloud storage won't fit on it's 500GB HDD and Dropbox deleted the synch preferences as part of the 'new features' upgrade
- keep crashing dropbox because it's just too much
Signed:
'a Dropbox user with 'improved team folders' and with disgruntled agency clients (who can’t get their work completed because we can’t access their work easily) and with 600,000+ files still to sync. on his PC '
PS I also received an email from Dropbox on Friday thanking me for my automated payment (!)
PPS I also received an email from Dropbox just now with some handy ‘after the event’ advice which only had a negative effect on my frame of mind:
• When accounts were migrated to improved team folders, existing team folders may have been moved or renamed.
• This means that if a team folder was previously moved, unmounted, or renamed, it was re-added, moved, and/or renamed back to the original name so that all team members have the team folder in their account at the top level, and all have the same name.
• This means that if the folder was previously unmounted or selectively synced, it will start to sync to their devices again.
• This behavior is expected as any selective sync settings were related to the location of the folder and do not follow the folder if it is moved.
• This is only expected to occur during the initial transition to improved team folders.
• Please keep in mind, if there was already a folder in the new location with the same name as the team folder that was moved, then you may see two copies of this folder. One with a “(2)” appended to the end of this folder name. This automatic rename occurs as two folders in the same location cannot have the same name. You can leave these folders as they are or rename the folders if you would like.
• If you still see a copy of the team folder that was moved in the original location, with only a small set of the folders or files it had originally, this may have occurred if these files or folders were unable to be moved automatically if they were actively being edited or accessed by a member of this team folder. I would recommend reviewing the content of this copy of the team folder to determine whether you would like to move any files or folders within it to the new location of the team folder.
