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New named Dropbox structure

I am a user of DropBox Business, on Windows 10.

Last week, I suddenly realized that the shortcuts to some of my Dropbox folders were broken.

A quick look learned me that the structure had changed.

While I used to access my folder through:

C:/User/{username}/Dropbox (COMPANY NAME)/, I can now find them at:
C:/User/{username}/{COMPANY NAME} Dropbox/MyFirstName LASTNAME/

Now, both structures seem to remain while the first one is now a hidden shortcut (although I can't seem to see where it links to).

So that I don't really know where my files actually are.

Is this change documented anywhere?

Thanks

After a couple of days, I realized this happened to all of this Dropbox Business users across the company, Mac and Windows, and that it messes up with backup strategies.

I didn't find anything about this new structure in DropBox's changelog.

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Comments

Walter

Hey @t4ngml, sorry to hear about this.

Could you provide some additional information about the issue you're facing and a screenshot of any errors you might be getting or what's troubling you?

For more information on why this might have happened, you can have a look here.

Keep me posted!

t4ngml

Please find enclosed the double dropbox structure I explained earlier.

I had a look at the links you provided. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense in our (company-wise) case, since we use DropBox Business for years now, and all the computers have faced this change at the same time. Thus, it can't be related to the computers setup.

Where this new structure comes from?

Thanks

coindrop

We are having the same issue and I don't understand why this is not a bigger 'headline'.
Before my local folder was called "Dropbox (companyname)" but now it has been automatically renamed to "companyname Dropbox"

And for some reason there's now a personal folder with my name placed in the root of the dropbox folder and when I open it, it contains folders (that were previously located in dropbox root) it makes no sense to us and we have not been making these changes our selves. Something has happened 3-4 days ago?

rb-eierschachteln

We have the exact same problem since yesterday.

All our folderpath, which link to a local dropbox file/folder, don't work anymore. Also Folders became visible but not accesible for users who don't have permissions.

RamonaTheresia

We face the same issue - the structure automatically updated somehow and now it doesn't work like before because of the personal suborders, so if somebody creats a link to any document in an folder where everybody has access to in another folder, the otherones are not able to open the link.

t4ngml

Hi @Walter

I'm obviously not the only one facing this issue.

There might be not much to worry about, but it's a surprizing change as a user, especially since it doesn't seem to be mentionned anywhere in your public changelog (unless there's another one accessible?).

Any info from you dev teams?

Thanks

rb-eierschachteln

Hi @Walter ,

are there any updates related to this topic?

Megan

Hey all, I hope you're having a great Friday so far.

At the moment, we're looking into this on our side, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Trust to know, that we'll update this thread, once we have further info on this. Thank you for your patience!

joimagg_work

Hello Dropbox,

I am wondering why Dropbox runs out a fundamental folder structure change without notifying it's customer beforehand?

What has changed?

- Main Dropbox folder name changed from "Dropbox (*Company*)" to "Dropbox *Company*"

- A "User folder" added as a "root directory", so an extra step into the Dropbox file directory.

- "Team folder" sits alongside "User folder" in the Dropbox "root directory"

Why Dropbox should notify before this kind of change?

- This change broke all links in all programs that use reference links. (InDesign, CAD programs).

- Our company now needs to go through all files using links and relink files with the added step of the user folder.

- This change broke the "Virtual drive letter" link in Windows.

- Creates confusion in the company, suddenly files dont work, links that were there, are not there...general confusion for a whole day.

I want to emphasize that I am not againts this change, it makes sense. But it is a change that Dropbox needed to notify beforehand. At the minimum write something about it in the "Whats new" page. I cannot find any information about this change.

Walter

Hi all - thanks for your patience while we looked into this from our side.

In short, it seems that you received the upgrade mentioned in this Help Center article on your business accounts recently.

If you happen to be a team admin, you should have received an email regarding this upgrade.

I hope this clears things up!

FrancesERA

Hi,

I work for a small organization with only 10 staff members. We run statistical code that all of us share, so our file path names are important and have to remain stable. Last night, all of our computers changed the file path names from "C:\Dropbox (Enrollment Research)\" to "C:\Enrollment Research Dropbox\Staff Name\," which breaks everything.

How can we get our file paths to go back to the simpler version?

Thanks!

frances

EMPBrian

I need to know this as well. It broke all of our links in our job tickets. There are thousands of tickets that we would need to change because of this.

FrancesERA

Thank you for responding and letting me know that it's not just us!

I've been looking online, and it appears that if you log into Dropbox online and go to All Files, you can tell Dropbox to move the shared folders out from under your name, which puts them back in the C:\Dropbox\ path instead of including your name. The name of our main Dropbox folder has changed, so we'll still need to update all of our code, but at least we won't have to add our names to each path every time any of us needs to use code.

Good luck!

Rich

@FrancesERA wrote:
Last night, all of our computers changed the file path names from "C:\Dropbox (Enrollment Research)\" to "C:\Enrollment Research Dropbox\Staff Name\," which breaks everything.

This is due to your Business team being upgraded. Your team admin would have been notified prior to the change. You can read more about it here:

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

Once your team has been upgraded, there is no going back to the former folder structure. Your team admin could have postponed it for 30 days, but once upgraded, it's done.

LZiegler1

This morning Dropbox did a database update and all the folders in our work Dropbox are now under main folders with each users name. What has happened? Is this a new folder structure that Dropbox implemented? I cannot find anything about such a change.

MrColJ

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.

MrColJ

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.)

Jay

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!

jeff6677

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.

ggladsjo

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!

Mark

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.

ggladsjo

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.

Mark

Hi @ggladsjo

Can you post a screengrab?

ggladsjo

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

Rich

@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.

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

Eastsite

Why do you change the top folder name of Dropbox in my case from e.g.
"C:\AB\Dropbox (MUSTER)" to
"C:\AB\MUSTER Dropbox" and
How can I change the name back to "Dropbox (MUSTER)"?

This is a disaster. All links and connections, established in the past, are now broken.

Why not give users the option to decide whether they want to have the new name (made up by dropbox) or keep the old name?

Eastsite

The whole set-up of my company is based on the Dropbox folder.
All software that builds on data from Windows files now uses invalid addresses because Dropbox changes the path name. My software is therefore flying blind at the moment. I have to set everything up again. And I am only one of x-million customers.
The reason for staying with Dropbox and not switching to OneDrive was that Dropbox understands how important file structures are, and Dropbox keeps its hands off the top folder level, unlike Microsoft. That reason no longer exists.

Jackson

Hello @Eastsite, sorry to hear about your issue.

The Dropbox folder is named automatically, and it can not be manually renamed.

Each Team Admin, should have been notified prior to the upgrade, about the incoming changes.

You can request renaming the folder as feature, by up-voting it in our Share an Idea part of the forum.

Hope this clears things up.

Eastsite

1) You, as the Dropbox team, write this as if it is self-evident that Dropbox customers have to deal with these deficiencies of Dropbox. This is an unsatisfactory customer support. Does Dropbox not see the problems Dropbox is causing with this renaming of the dropbox root folder?

2) Sorry, the button "Vote for this idea" on this site https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-ideas/Renaming-Dropbox-root-folder/idi-p/230261#comments does not work.

If the button doesn't work for me today and the button hasn't worked for the last 5 years either, then you can assume 4400 votes instead of 44 votes....

Rich

@Eastsite wrote:
All links and connections, established in the past, are now broken.

Create a symbolic link that points C:\AB\Dropbox (MUSTER) to C:\AB\MUSTER Dropbox.