Settings and Preferences
The Dropbox Community is here to help if you have questions about your account settings and preferences. Learn and share advice with members.
Here's the scenario. Mac OS Ventura, I have a Work Dropbox account & a Personal one. I connect these online while signed into my personal account easily enough. Go through the websites selective sync process for my personal account which changes the Personal Dropbox folder to the dropbox icon in Finder & in the dropdown menu of the app shows it at the top & as "signed in". Syncing begins, I have access to the right-click menu to assign files as "online only" or "available offline" in Finder, all good so far. I check with dropbox information... here is their quote: "You must be logged into both linked Dropbox accounts on the web session or the app you're using to switch between your accounts." So I move on to signing in to my work account which appears in the dropdown of the app as signed out. Heres where the issues begin... When I go to the app to switch accounts, it takes me back to the online process to selectively sync, however if I follow that through to completion my work account is signed in & my Personal account is now signed out. If I try to sign in to my Personal account in the Preferences / Account tab of the app it takes me back to the online selective sync cycle I've already completed for that account & if I follow that through to completion a second time I am then signed out of my Work account. The same thing happens if I follow Dropboxes own instructions & try to do it on the website. Endless loop ensues.
It absolutely baffles me the software engineers get sign off on these products & are able to bring them to market when they are so woefully poorly built. God knows how much my work are paying for this next to useless software... I look forward to a moderator or staff member explaining to me how despite following all instructions this is somehow my fault.
@2TXBoyz wrote:
... that no longer seems to support the professional and personal accounts (both) that Dropbox encouraged us to create long ago.
When you say professional, are you referring to the actual Professional plan, or is it actually a Business team account?
The only way to link two accounts and to sync them both is if one is a Business team account (Standard, Advanced, Business, Business Plus, or Enterprise), and the other is a personal account (Basic, Plus, Family, Professional, or Essentials).
One is my business use account, but it is a free account, not a paid plan (I'll use "business use" as the description to make that more clear). I am not trying to link them. I just to be able to toggle between them, as I could for years after Dropbox specifically encouraged all users to set up personal use account in addition to business use accounts. Then years after many of us did that they seem to have eliminated that ability, which immediately unsync'd my personal account, and that's problematic to not have the files sync for the past couple years. It eliminates the benefit of a cloud file server entirely to me.
Hi from me too, @2TXBoyz. When Rich says “link”, he also means to pair them basically so that they’re both synced at the same time on your computer and you shouldn’t need to log out of one to access the other.
Can you provide more details on what happens exactly if you try to pair your Business and personal accounts? I’d like to see if I can help you more.
Nancy
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so, give it a Like below to let us know.
Need help with something else? Ask me a question!
Find Tips & Tricks Discover more ways to use Dropbox here!
Interested in Community Groups? Click here to join!
Nancy, when I try to link them, it says only a team account can be paired. If I use the app and try to link an account, it won't even let me log in for my personal account, it says login to a team account as the error message.
Hey @2TXBoyz!
You mentioned "One is my business use account, but it is a free account, not a paid plan" so is it safe to assume we're talking about a Basic plan?
If so, would you mind clarifying the exact subscription that you're using on your paid account?
Megan
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so, give it a Like below to let us know.
Need help with something else? Ask me a question!
Find Tips & Tricks Discover more ways to use Dropbox here!
Interested in Community Groups? Click here to join!
By "free account" I mean neither of them is a paid account. I believe they are, therefore, both "basic" plans.
Thanks for clarifying, @2TXBoyz.
Indeed, only a Dropbox Business and an individual plan can be paired and thus accessed from the same device at the same time.
I will, however, pass your feedback about this to our team.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and if you have any more questions, let us know.
Hannah
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so, give it a Like below to let us know.
Need help with something else? Ask me a question!
Find Tips & Tricks Discover more ways to use Dropbox here!
Interested in Community Groups? Click here to join!
Again, when Dropbox (not me!) years ago sent out emails to all users encouraging them to create personal accounts to pair with their business accounts, that worked fine for a long time with basic accounts, and toggling between them and having them both constantly sync was no issue. A couple years ago that was inexplicably abandoned and all those that did what Dropbox suggested in creating that second, personal account, got left high and dry, unsync'd, which is one of the two primary reasons (that's a bad service issue) we went with a different shared cloud system for our organization (the other was a security problem as many banks we deal with have Dropbox locked out because of the historically weak security compared to the other options out there).
It would be nice to see Dropbox reverse the poor service problem and not leave account holders abandoned, even if they are free accounts, especially as Dropbox was the one that encouraged people to create those accounts to begin with. I hoped there was a solution I had just missed all this time, but apparently not.
Hi there!
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for a ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!