How to remove spaces from Dropbox folder names (spaces causing issues)

[Ben S.48]

Hi There,

We need to run Bitnami web stacks but the path contains spaces because of the Dropbox folder name.

How do we rename the folders so there aren't spaces?

Or if we unsubscribe from Dropbox for business (we've found it kind of painful in practice) will the personal dropbox folder name get renamed to 'Dropbox' (without spaces/brackets)?

Cheers

Ben

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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Ben S.48 wrote:

How do we rename the folders so there aren't spaces?

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There is no official method to rename the Dropbox folder. Any account that uses Teams or Dropbox for Business will have its Dropbox folder renamed to include the name of the team/business.

There is a way to do it but it is completely unsupported (i.e. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK). Exit Dropbox. Make a note of the EXACT Dropbox folder name. Rename it to "Dropbox" and then create a symlink using the original folder name and pointing to the Dropbox folder. Relaunch the client.

Or if we unsubscribe from Dropbox for business ... will the personal dropbox folder name get renamed to 'Dropbox' (without spaces/brackets)?

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Existing folders will not be renamed, but any new installations would not have the team/business name in the folder. For existing installations you would need to uninstall Dropbox, rename the folder, then reinstall again, pointing the client to the existing Dropbox folder.

[Ben S.48]

Awesome, thanks heaps. Will remove the team account. Cheers

[mirestrepo]

It will be nice if Dropbox added an official method to do this. Spaces in paths cause all sorts of trouble for people who use dropbox to store source code. Any plans to do so? 

Thanks

[Rich]

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mirestrepo wrote:

Any plans to do so?

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Best guess... not likely.

[jonleung]

THANK YOU!!!!

[kpb]

I don't want to knock your suggestion, but I really don't want to be futzing with symlinks across multiple machines and platforms. I can just see myself making a mistake and losing files. And since I refuse to have filenames with brackets or spaces (let alone both!) on my computers, there seems to be no way I can use a separate "Dropbox (Work)" account. This is a deal breaker for me--I won't be using the Work account I just created until Dropbox fixes this problem.

[rwmorris]

Because I have to keep doing this, I'm providing this step-by-step for macOS.

After installing Dropbox through Sydney University business account, it creates a folder called "Dropbox (Sydney Uni)" in my home directory by default, which breaks all my code in shared projects. So I want to rename the default folder to "Dropbox" (I don't have a personal Dropbox account).

After installing Dropbox and once it has finished downloading all your files to the default directory, the blue badges will disappear and be replaced with a green tick on all the completely downloaded files. We can now begin.

1. Quit Dropbox (select the cog in the Dropbox menubar item).

2. In Finder, rename the "Dropbox (Sydney Uni)" folder to "Dropbox"

3. open Terminal and navigate to your home directory 

cd ~

4. create a symlink to the "Dropbox" folder with the same name as the default Dropbox directory (in my case "Dropbox (Sydney Uni)")

ln -s Dropbox Dropbox\ \(Sydney\ Uni\)

5.  hide the new symlink so you don't have to be reminded of the stupid decisions of the Dropbox development team every day

chflags -h hidden Dropbox\ \(Sydney\ Uni\)

6. check your work

ls -l

drwx------@ 12 rich  staff   384 19 Nov 21:10 Dropbox
lrwxr-xr-x   1 rich  staff     7 19 Nov 21:27 Dropbox (Sydney Uni) -> Dropbox

7. restart Dropbox. It shouldn't complain about anything since it sees the new symlink as the default folder

[dhuber23b]

Thanks, rwmorris, this method worked for me.

[take555]

Thank you @rwmorris very much !!

You saved my life !!