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Switching from One Drive to Dropbox

Hello everyone,

Onedrive is slowly but surely driving me crazy. The main problem I'm having with it is that you can't exclude folders from the root folder for documents. As many of you know, excluding a folder in the Onedrive language means that I don't want that folder on my computer. Who came up with something like that?

Also, my PC is mainly used for gaming and nowadays all applications also store their files in the Documents folder.
I hope I got it right, but it seems that Dropbox is able to have the same feature set as Onedrive with syncing my documents, pictures and so on, but with the advantage that I can exclude certain folders without losing them locally.

Could anyone here help me see if I'm on the right track?

Many thanks in advance!

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Comments

Mark

@derpsn wrote:
I hope I got it right, but it seems that Dropbox is able to have the same feature set as Onedrive with syncing my documents, pictures and so on, but with the advantage that I can exclude certain folders without losing them locally.

Unfortunately not. Dropbox only sync's what is inside the \Dropbox directory. So it wont sync My Documents etc. unless you physically relocate those directories in to the Dropbox folder (which is what I always did when I had a windows device)

derpsn

But I have seen that the desktop app is able to add my external document folder.

So not by default, but I can add it, right?

Mark

@derpsn wrote:
But I have seen that the desktop app is able to add my external document folder.

So not by default, but I can add it, right?

That is Dropbox backup which does not sync, but instead backup. They did beta test it outside of Backup but stopped it.

Dropbox syncing (as in what you are used to with OneDrive) can only sync what is inside the \Dropbox directory.

derpsn

All right. That's a real bummer.

So I won't have any benefits here 😞

Здравко

@derpsn wrote:
... with syncing my documents, pictures and so on, but with the advantage that I can exclude certain folders without losing them locally.
...

Hi @derpsn,

I will try say it a bit different. If you never added particular folder you don't need to exclude it. 😉 Hope this is a bit more clear.

By the way, don't rely on so called "backup" - it's unidirectional sync in fact. I believe you don't need backup, but if you need a real backup, look for real backup service - Dropbox is NOT backup service, it's sync service (similar things may be said for most direct Dropbox competitors). Just don't get confused by no so correct names that have been set.

Good luck.

derpsn

Hello 🙂
I understand what you mean and you are right. The problem I have is that I want to synchronize my entire documents folder by default and exclude the ones I don't need.
I also use features like document versioning a lot.

Perhaps I need to rethink my current approach.

Здравко

@derpsn wrote:
... The problem I have is that I want to synchronize my entire documents folder by default and exclude the ones I don't need.
...

Hm..🤔 Ok, but I'm not sure understand what's the problem. No one of your folders get in Dropbox on it's own. If you want Documents, select it and don't select any other (like Downloads, Music, etc)...

ADD: If mean ignoring subfolder in your Documents, give a try to the described here. 😉

derpsn

I think that's the feature I didn't understand at first, but it's slowly clearing up.

What I need is a backup feature for my documents folder with the option to exclude certain folders.

But I don't know if Dropbox Backup supports the ignore feature.