Re: New named Dropbox structure

Thank you!  

I came into the office today with some people saying they couldn't get on, others saying all their files were showing 0kb size.  Troubleshooting, I noticed all of my files have been moved from /dropbox/client/file.pdf to /dropbox/username/client/file.pdf.  So millions of files are not in their expected location. 

I haven't personally had it get in my way yet, but I'm confused as to where the world was told this was going to happen, and I'm scared to death with long file names.  Filename maximum is set to 256 characters on both operating systems, and that includes the folder structure.  So, for example, c://user/colin/dropbox (company name)/First Last/client/filings/initial/2022/June/2022_06_30 Spreadsheet of Outstanding Invoices.xlsx is 130 characters.  In a business, it doesn't take much for at least one file to magically hit 256 and not sync; we face it all the time.  And now that's effectively a different number for each person—since my name is 11 characters, a space and a slash, my max is now 243.

Our office is mostly Macs, and so far everyone affected has been on a Mac.  But the new root feature/bug is on the browser also, so I'm not sure that being on a Mac is related.

I just spent time with Customer Service chat.  It's a feature, not a bug!  It only applies to Dropbox for Business customers, and yes, will mean your computer will re-download everything.

Upcoming Business Team Changes 

As you can see from the link above, we are told to be excited about it (but without any actual reasons.)

Hi LZiegler1, MrColJ, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

It sounds like your Dropbox Business team has recently upgraded to the new team space.

Your team admin would've received an email about this change and how to prepare the team for the upgrade.

You can read more about the team space in this article on the new structure for the team.

If you need any further assistance, please let me know!

This folder structure has crippled my company this week and has create chaos and confusion. Your rollout of this new 'feature' has been a disaster. 

Hello Dropbox for Business users, 

Did the August 5th automated system update move or change the organization of your file folders? I'm now seeing folders in the main company folder that were previously subfolders, and some main folders which have become subfolders under my user folder. Trying to figure out if this is a permanent change, or just temporary while files are being updated/synced. We are an A/E firm using AutoCAD extensively, and I'm concerned the update may have change file paths/locations, which in turn will mess up the file paths for our AutoCAD files. 

It seems this update was more extensive than I originally anticipated, so I'm trying to find out more information regarding changes to file organization. 

Thanks!

Dropbox updates only literally update the software they dont move things around in your account. 

Have a look at www.dropbox.com/events to see who/what moved them. If you click on one of the files and 'Restore Previous Versions' it will show you more info about who/what did it. 

Thanks for the link, but it doesn't appear anyone in the organization has made changes in the last 24 hours that would result in file reorganization. 

I just noticed I'm seeing a difference in some of the folders - rather than having the two building icon on team folders, they have a clock and appear to be empty. I'm not sure what the clock represents, as I've never seen it before and it isn't listed here; https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/sort-preview/file-folder-symbol-icon

Thanks again for the quick response.

Hi ggladsjo 

Can you post a screengrab?

The Haines, Juneau, Ketchikan folders are empty duplicates of subfolders within the Projects team folder. 

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ggladsjo wrote:

It seems this update was more extensive than I originally anticipated, so I'm trying to find out more information regarding changes to file organization.

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The update to the newer Dropbox Business did indeed change the location for your folders. The following help article describes it, but the short version is that your team folders were moved into the new team space, and other content (including shared folders) would have moved to the personal folder of the team member. These changes are permanent. If you were using links within your files, you'll likely need to update them to point to the new paths.

• https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/plans-upgrades/upcoming-business-team-changes

Hello

I am having a same problem, and I am about to leave dropbox for that reason. I have been paying business account for my entire architect's office over 5 years now. Because of name change, all my reference links is gone now. I spoke to Help, but they can't do anything. The only reason I've paid to dropbox is not to lose reference connection. Now, my office is stopped. Do you have any solution for loosing references?

Hi HSMA, it sounds like you recently migrated to the new team space. as noted by Rich.

This means that any existing links and files would be in different locations, so they might need to be updated in order for certain file types to work.

Some files use relative links (as in ../John/file.xlsx) or absolute links (C:\Dropbox\John\file.xlsx), so some files might not need major changes to links.

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HSMA wrote:

Because of name change, all my reference links is gone now. ... Do you have any solution for loosing references?

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Refer to my reply in your other thread.

Yeah, not a "feature" I had been looking for either.

Something went wrong during my "upgrade" so I now have two dropbox folders. The one has (old) added to its name and contains all my files.

The other only has an empty Pictures folder.

Dropbox says it's downloading 125,866 files which will take around 2 days to finish.

Not really the way I wanted to start my Monday.

I'm the admin for this account but I do not recall having seen any important updates coming to your dropbox message. At least no email that stood out and made me think I needed to take any action.

So what do I do? Wait two days for dropbox to sync the new folder and fill up my disk with a second copy of all my files?

Any suggestions would be very welcome

Thanks

This same thing has just occurred to our company on the Saturday of labor day weekend.  The amount of problems this is causing us can not be overstated.  This is a disaster and your response is extremely callous to the problem Dropbox has caused without seeming to have a clue to the problem.  How can we unwind the file structure change?  It said in another help item that the administrators would be notified of this change.  I was never notified.  It just happened and now I have to work all labor day weekend to try to not have a total break down of our company work.  Please help us to understand how we can fix this problem.  It is not helpful, it is terrible.

It appears to me the business account is updated and personal named folder is added to the root folder. 
This creates the below problems : 

1) Our office team used to send across folder path in whatsapp for quick file sharing, with the added peronal named folder, all files has unique path and cannot be shared efficiently. 

2) Our team uses programme like Rhino / Indesign, which one file will link to another file, like the material mapping, or link to a illustration etc. With the added personal named folder, my colleauge now have trouble to open another rhino / indesign file, as all the links are wrong. It limits our team ability of sharing working file across. 

I don't see there is any benefit of adding a personal name folder as the root folder for the dropbox, and it creates a lot of problem for office using dropbox as their server and sharing work file. If someone needs a personal named folder, they can simply open a folder as they want at anywhere, which is under the team's control, rather than a compulsory change. I strongly recommend to revert back the version WITHOUT the personal named root folder. I believe this issue also happened for many other offices, and as a user we are looking for alternative platform to solve this problem. I hope Dropbox can review this asap. 

Recently the business portion of Dropbox now has my folders under a new directory as my user name and I need to open / uncollapse that in file explorer every time I want to view my files and folders. This added step every time is annoying. Any idea why this happened and if there is away to revert? I did some searching and may be related to teams. I am the Admin / Owner and my user type is Team Admin (no idea if the team part is the issue or how to correct).

Hi Leatherfoot, happy Thursday! 

At the moment, it's not possible to change the structure of how your Dropbox account looks in your File Explorer, since it mimics and syncs the account the same way you see it on the web.

What you describe is indeed related to how a Business team behaves. Your comments on this have been quite helpful, and I will do everything I can to ensure that your voice is heard.

I hope this clarifies!

Same thing happened to us. Whole path structure is broken, software we are using non of them work properly as they cannot access files with correct paths. Whos great idea on Dropbox side was this? Especially in Business sector when companies relies on precise file structures?

The whole reason we use Dropbox for Business is to share files within the organization. With the new, unwanted rearchitecture, all the folders got put inside a User Name folder, and I can't drag/move them back to the top level where I want them. It prevents me from moving them in the Finder plugin (MacOS) and it is also grayed out / not possible in the web app.

Any thoughts on how to restore previous organization to shared files? We DO NOT want user-named folders, just the top level DropBox <businessname> as it was before.

This is not an acceptable change that you are pushing as an "upgrade". You are going to break systems for my team and I'm going to have to try to fix what you've "improved" over the weekend. You should not modify any file system paths. We rely on them being static. Your postponement window is also too narrow and does not allow for long-term planning of this project - and it is a project to adjust to this on our side.

Hi marathon, welcome to our Community! 

At the moment, you wouldn't be able to change the structure, I'm afraid. However, I am here to help you understand your options as much as I can. 

You mentioned that you have some content inside your personal folder, that you want to share with the rest of your Team, right? 

Have you tried adding the members to the folders, and essentially sharing the content with them? 

Let me know more! 

Thanks for your reply.

You call it a "personal folder" that I want to "share with the rest of the team". The entire Business Dropbox is (or was) shared with the entire team, before this Downgrade in functionality.

I fail to understand why Dropbox for Business, with emphasis on Business, would try to isolate content based on an individual's identity. That's completely contrary to the idea of a Business Dropbox.

I can share the individual folders with the team -- again -- but that leaves a totally unnecessary folder with My Name in the structure.

Please communicate to your management that this is a dumb decision and should be reversed. I've used Dropbox for many years and have paid a lot of money for multiple licenses (recently downgraded) but I'm about to dump the whole thing, between this "architectural" decision and the never-ending push to try to get me to keep everything in the cloud. The entire reason I chose Dropbox was because it does local syncing. There are lots of others who do Cloud stuff, many of them do it better than you do. Your unique value proposition is (or was) the excellence of sync across multiple devices. Don't ruint that!

Hey marathon, thanks for your feedback on this.

It's been noted in our system for our devs' consideration. 

Let us know if you have anything else to add. 

another update:

after automatic update, dropbox changed settings by it owns from local to online only. So basically without our permission it deleted all our company files we had locally! now for several days we are unable to access files properly as sync is so slow as most likely most of companies have similar problems.

For "file hosting service" company, changing file structures, deleting client files stored locally, and forcing other nonsense is absolutely insane!