Child Item

Changed home folder name, now the Dropbox desktop app will not start

On my Mac I changed my home folder/user name folder. Now, when dp starts, it attempts to change permissions on the original home folder, which no longer exists, and then exits. Is there a way to tell dp that this folder no longer exists, and to move to the new.
Thanks for any assist.

Find more posts tagged with

Setting Up the Apps

Desktop

Sync

Spam

Insightful

Closed - Partially Delivered

Accepted answers

Stefanie

Hi Ian,

You'd need to do a complete reinstall in order to fix this. First, make sure you save and quit ALL programs that access files in the Dropbox folder.

Download the newest version:

www.dropbox.com/install

Stop Dropbox (If needed):

- Click the Dropbox icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen
- Click on the gear icon in the Notifications panel and select 'Quit Dropbox'

Delete Dropbox meta-data folder:

- To delete this folder open a Terminal (Located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal for Mac OS)
- Copy and paste the following lines into the Terminal and press RETURN:

mv ~/.dropbox ~/.Trash/dropbox.old
mv ~/.dropbox-master ~/.Trash/dropbox-master.old

- This will move the folder to the Trash and make it visible. Please note that you could see an error message regarding the existence of the folder ".dropbox-master" when you run the last of the lines above. This is completely normal and you can go on with the next step.

Delete the Dropbox Contextual Menu Item Plugin

- Open the Finder and select Go to folder... from the Go menu (or press Shift-Command-G)
- A dialog box should appear. Now copy and paste the following line into the box and press the return key:

     /Library/

- Finally drag the DropboxHelperTools folder to the Trash and enter your Administrator password if prompted to complete this action.

Reinstall the Dropbox desktop application

- Open the Dropbox .dmg file and double click the Dropbox icon.
- Dropbox should appear in your menu bar.
- Relink your account.

I hope this helps!

All comments

Stefanie

Hi Ian,

You'd need to do a complete reinstall in order to fix this. First, make sure you save and quit ALL programs that access files in the Dropbox folder.

Download the newest version:

www.dropbox.com/install

Stop Dropbox (If needed):

- Click the Dropbox icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen
- Click on the gear icon in the Notifications panel and select 'Quit Dropbox'

Delete Dropbox meta-data folder:

- To delete this folder open a Terminal (Located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal for Mac OS)
- Copy and paste the following lines into the Terminal and press RETURN:

mv ~/.dropbox ~/.Trash/dropbox.old
mv ~/.dropbox-master ~/.Trash/dropbox-master.old

- This will move the folder to the Trash and make it visible. Please note that you could see an error message regarding the existence of the folder ".dropbox-master" when you run the last of the lines above. This is completely normal and you can go on with the next step.

Delete the Dropbox Contextual Menu Item Plugin

- Open the Finder and select Go to folder... from the Go menu (or press Shift-Command-G)
- A dialog box should appear. Now copy and paste the following line into the box and press the return key:

     /Library/

- Finally drag the DropboxHelperTools folder to the Trash and enter your Administrator password if prompted to complete this action.

Reinstall the Dropbox desktop application

- Open the Dropbox .dmg file and double click the Dropbox icon.
- Dropbox should appear in your menu bar.
- Relink your account.

I hope this helps!

Tamsin S.

Thanks. Worked a treat.

Ron K.6

For those that helped It is all well and is working perfectly as it should THANKS

Judy B.6

I'm trying to follow the procedure recommended. After you start by downloading the newest version, it doesn't say to double click the .dmg. Without that , the dropbox icon in the menu bar shows the top level of my dropbox, without my signing in, and I don't see a Notifications panel . (on iMac, 2013 model, running Yosemite, if that means anything). I clicked the DMG and it says to double click the pkg to install . Is that what I do? that sort-of makes sense.

thanks for clarification.

Alice J.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

I just upgraded from 10.8 to 10.10 - I am a network user (local account authenticates with AD). My old User account name wasn't recognized when I upgraded, so I had to migrate my old user account to my new user network name (basically, it just changed the name). This is why Dropbox got broken - it couldn't find the path to the old name, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

I was trying everything from removing my client folder and trying to deleting the plist, but nothing was working. Could not figure out how to change the name of the renamed user account. I finally did more intense searching and found this link.

Notes: I never did have to stop Dropbox, since it wouldn't even launch! So no problem there. Also, I did not find the file in my user Library, DropboxHelperTools, but no problem either. It all is working again regardless.

THANK YOU!!

Stefanie

Hi Alice,

I'm super glad to hear everything is working again!

Scott V.4

I'm now on my 4th month with a Mac and am still learning my way around. Thank you so much for the help. This worked like a charm!

Sue M.26

Thanks, Terminal couldn't find the files in step 1 but deleting the Dropbox HelperTools folder did it for me!

Stefanie

Hi all,

If you cannot find the folder under Dropbox HelperTools that's ok, you can still continue with the rest of the instructions.

I'm glad this is working for you all!

Thiago U.

Sofia, you are great!

Stephanos K.

Please, could we have a similar guide for Windows? I'm having the same problem but all the other threads i found are not useful/relevant

Thanks!

Stefanie

Hi Stephanos,

Can you please let me know what kind of error message you are getting when trying to start Dropbox after this name change of the user folder on Windows?

Thanks.

Stephanos K.

Sofia,

Apologies, i misread the earlier post and realized the error was not applicable to my case. I made a new thread in the following link:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204655726-Couldnt-start-Dropbox-due-to-permissions-error-

Jifei S.

Thanks Sofia. Works for me on ubuntu. @Sofia

Gabriel K.2

Thanks a million! This helped me getting DB to start up again.

Simon P.8

Thank you Sofia, worked perfectly!

Teddy

Does this solution erase the huge dropbox folder on my drive?

My internet connection is slow and I sure don't want to redownload all those files.

Also - why wouldn't "repair permissions" fix this?

How I got here - all I did was do a Security Update and update printer driver (suggested by App Store). Same hard drives, same everything else. Yosemite 10.10.5.

simontaubert

This saved my day, thank you!

stacy a.

"No such file or directory" is the message on terminal for the first step
Help!

Zed

Hey @stacy a. , is your Dropbox folder in its default location ( for example /Users/username/Dropbox ) or in another location?

Thanks!

stacy a.

it is in the correct location.
i have another bad thing happening.
i just received an email saying large deletions were occurring in my dropbox.
it referred me to a link where i could restore them.
only a few files out of the large number of files
were really deleted by me. most were deleting themselves.

also, i had to shut down my drop box because it was affecting my gmail,
which slowed down to just barely working because of the tremendous
download or upload activity of dropbox.

very scary whats happening.

any suggestions? i may just have to restore all and setup my own backup as
drop box seems to have gone crazy doing things i have not done.

Zed

@stacy a., if you manually tried to change the name of the Dropbox folder, this would be the cause of the deletions you are experiencing.

The fastest way for us to assist with those deleted files is for you to carefully read this article first.

1. Navigate to the Events Page to locate and undo deletion events.

2. Navigate the Deleted Files page to locate and restore your deleted files

If you are still unable to undo those events recover your files get in touch with Dropbox support and provide an event link.

Thank you.

Lord_Helvetica

Thank you. I tried everything I could think of. Turns out I should have just done more research so I could find this gem of a process. Many thanks!

jamestrudgian74

Perfect, thanks!

mikecnyc

Thank you. Worked like a charm.

TimmyR

Also worked for me. Uninstalled Dropbox, stopped on process that was running. Followed above steps which did not appear to necessarily do anything in Terminal. DropboxHelperTools was not in Library. Reinstalled Dropbox and it appears it is syncing all folders now.

RobStar

Feb 17, 2018
Same problem here on a brand new iMac PRO 14 core OS 10.13.3

I had changed my home folder name due to a screwed up Migration Assistant process.

Tried pretty much everything I knew several times but this process using the Terminal access window solved it quick and easy.

No files were lost or damaged in the resolution of this problem and I approve this message!

RobStar

Las Vegas

FrankLorenz

Super. It worked exactely as described

jasonsuh7

absolute best

ThanksStephanie

Fantastic, Stefanie.

Worked like a charm. Thank you so much.