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Instructions on 'How to Move Dropbox Folder' not working

I suspect hosting my Dropbox Desktop (Desktop app) on my hard drive is the cause of my computer seriously bogging down recently.

I wanted to try moving the DropBox Desktop to my Passport External Harddrive.

I found these instructions below in the DropBox help menus but nothing there makes sense.

How to move your Dropbox folder

Click the Dropbox icon in the menu bar.
Click Preferences (Linux), or your avatar (profile picture or initials) (macOS and Windows)
Click Sync (on macOS you’ll first need to click Preferences…).
Click Move… (Linux and Windows), or Dropbox location (macOS).
Select the new location for your Dropbox folder.
Let Dropbox move your folder and its contents to the new location.

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1. - ok

2 - click "Initials" - ok - a small window also with my initials and my name opens but it is not interactive. Its basically a picture. Right click or left makes no difference.

3 - No "preferences" are available following step 2 BUT if I instead go to the top Left corner and find the three verticle dashes and click on them then go to "File" and then "Preferences", I get there.

4. There is no "Move" option in Preferences. There are headings "General", "Account", "Backups", "Bandwidth", "Proxies", "Notifications", "Sync"

So where is "Move"?

Thx in advance for any help.

David

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Lusil

Hi there @DavidBally010, thanks for reaching out to us.

The Preferences should come up as a drop-down menu after clicking on your avatar icon.

If you click on it and nothing happens, could you let me know if you've tried rebooting your computer? Maybe that will do the trick.

Let me know how it goes, cheers!

DavidBally010

I don't have an avatar but I think my initials are in the place it would be. When I click on my initials, even after just rebooting, the only thing that opens is a partial picture of my name. It is not a hyperlink or anything else. Its just a picture. I have pointed it out with the screen app and added an arrow to show what pops up when I click my initials. That is not there normally and only pops out when I click on my initials.

Dropbox 3.PNG

Daphne

Thanks for the screenshot @DavidBally010!

It seems that you're clicking on the Dropbox icon in your task bar/dock which is opening the app, which is why you're not seeing the appropriate options there.

Please check out the screenshots for your computer's OS on this page to find the correct icon that's mentioned in the first step.

Just to mention, we would generally recommend against moving the Dropbox folder to an external drive due to the issues that can be caused if the drive is unmounted while the desktop app is running.

If you haven't already, please check out the info provided here before moving the folder to your Passport drive.

Let me know if that helps!

James Lynes

Right. It's not working!!! Frustrating, frustrating frustrating!!! (Chromebook ASUS)

Mark

If you are using a Chromebook then there is no Dropbox folder on your machine @James Lynes . Thats because you cannot install things like a computer on to it - you run it like a mobile device. So the options do not exist (hence you cannot open a Word document and save to C:\My Documents etc. as it doesnt have one).

James Lynes

Thanks Mark,

I do have Dropbox on my Chromebook & have been using it for the past several months. My problem is when I open Dropbox & the list of folders are in rows one after the other, I can't move one folder into another. If I inadvertently started a new folder but in a sub-folder of a main folder, I can't "clip & paste" or drag it to make it a main folder or put it in a sub-folder of a different folder. Dropbox doesn't appear to have a "clip & paste" or "drag" option to do this.

Suggestions?

JJL

Hannah

Hey @James Lynes, do you see some kind of ellipsis button (three dots) next to the folder, that would give you an option to move it?