How to merge two Dropbox folders I inadvertently created?

Question

Hi all,

I've had dropbox for a decade, and it always worked fine.  Four years ago, I discovered that the dropbox folder on my C drive was running out of space.  So I moved it to the F drive ("Documents & Data") which is much larger.  No problem;  everything still worked fine.

But suddenly it isn't.  As of two months ago, it seems my regular dropbox folder (on the F drive) is not syncing anymore.  Instead, a nearly duplicate dropbox folder on the C drive has become the default... though, I haven't been saving things there locally so two months of work have not been saved online.

I'd prefer to keep everything on the F drive, which is much larger, but I can't figure out how to merge the two folders and get rid of the duplicate.  When I went to preferences and tried to redirect syncing to the F drive, it balked, saying there was already a file named "Dropbox" there.

I thought about deleting the unwanted C drive folder to see if that will help -- after making sure that there are no newer file versions there, which I think I can do -- but I'm nervous about doing so because it claims it'll delete those files everywhere.  Which I don't want.

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions... this whole thing is making my head spin!

Walter · Accepted Answer

Hey @Tallis, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

It sounds like you tried to delete the syncing copy of your Dropbox folder (the one on your C drive) and not the local copy on your F drive which would lead to the deletion of your files in Dropbox as the desktop app would sync those across your devices and the website as well.

At this point, if you made sure that the desktop app is up to date in your system tray and not still syncing, you can unlink your account from the app's preferences under the Account tab and then re-link it using the path of your Dropbox folder in your F drive and let the app sync your changes and/or re-index your files.

For example, if your old Dropbox folder was added to: F:\Desktop\Dropbox you would need to choose F:\Desktop and the client will try and create a new Dropbox folder. If you're connecting with the same Dropbox account as before, Dropbox will detect the existing folder and will then prompt you to merge the Dropbox folder. Upon merging the desktop version of Dropbox will check the existing files and the server versions and update accordingly.

Just keep in mind that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder or on the web interface while the folder was "offline" will generate conflicted copies.

I hope this helps!