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Migrating from Dropbox Basic to Dropbox Plus

Hello , Can anyone give me the perfect instructions on how to best migrate from Basic to Plus?

Note : My Basic and Plus don't have the same email addres, so they are different accounts but on the same Drive D.

I currently have two Dropbox entries on my D drive: for convenience, let's say Dropbox Basic and Dropbox Plus. I use Basic daily, so all files there are currently up to date. Is it now a matter of copying all the files in Basic-Folder to Plus-Folder? I tried this, by the way, but it wasn't successful. The files were described in text in the Plus destination folder, but otherwise empty. There must be a workable method for this, right? Thanks in advance for your reply. Ruud

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Ruud-J

Question or Issue
Migrate Basic account to Plus

Mark

How exactly do you log on and work this @Ruud-J ? As it isnt possible to have two installs of Dropbox running and working at the same time the way you are working this is going to be important.

Ruud-J

Hello Mark , thanks for reply. My running box is my Basic , typically auto log in when starts up my laptop. If I want my Plus , I need to log out basic and log in to Plus. But the sync directories under Plus are not the one as under Basic. So my idea was : sync everthing in basic , then logout basic , copy al the files to plus directory and log in to plus and everything will be starting to sync dropbox plus in the cloud. But copy or move local from basic to plus enters some problems with empty files , or some errors ....

Mark

Fab, that makes sense.

So, personally what I'd do to tidy this all up a bit is move everything to a new directory maybe on your desktop (so create a new folder, something like 'Dropbox temp'). Put all of the files/folders you want from both account into this new folder.

Log out of Dropbox on your machine and then delete the Dropbox directories.

Reinstall from http://www.dropbox.com/downloading and log in with the new Plus account. Once logged in drag everything from the desktop to the new 'Dropbox' folder and let it sync

Ruud-J

Mark , thanks.

I had this method in mind as well. Now, PLUS doesn't yet contain any relevant data, so merging Basic and Plus isn't necessary. So if I log out of Basic and then copy everything to PLUS, log in to PLUS, and forget about Basic, Plus should sync, and that becomes my new Dropbox, right?

Walter

Yes, that would be correct @Ruud-J.

Alternatively, you can put all your files from the Dropbox Basic account into one folder and share the folder with your Dropbox Plus account.

Let us know if anything else comes up!

Ruud Jansen

Thanks Walter , I gonna try ! Keep informed. Gr

Hannah

Hi there, @Ruud-J, thanks for your post on our Community!

Would you mind clarifying what you'd like to do or the issue you're having, so we can assist you further?

Any additional details or screenshots that might be showing your issue, are welcome.

Thanks in advance!

Nancy

Hey @Ruud-J! Do you still want us to look into your request?

If yes, please feel free to send over more details.

Ruud-J

Hi Nancy, thanks for the replies. I was wondering about the following: I have a free basic account, which I've been using for years. But I also have a paid PLUS account, which I don't use at all. I've been paying for that account for years. I always assumed I was paying for the subscription I'm currently using (but that's free). Okay, my mistake, and I wasn't paying attention. Isn't there a simple way to link my payment to my current account, which I use constantly and have all my files on, and then delete my other account? In short: link my payment to my operational basic account, which will then become from basic to PLUS. That's less work than following the steps I was advised to follow. I think you can easily see from your side that I am the basic and plus owner.

Jay

HI @Ruud-J, currently, it isn't possible to transfer a paid subscription from one Dropbox account to another.

The payment has to remain associated with the account that was upgraded.

Ruud-J

thanks Jay ... I'd already thought so... I'll try the recommended method again. It's still a lot of fiddling...

I don't know why, but copying the entire existing basic Dropbox folder to a different temporary location on my C, D, or E drive always results in a hang somewhere along the line. I've tested with other local, similarly sized, non-Dropbox-related folders, and it works ; no hang up or similairity. It's quite frustrating. So converting my free folder to plus (local) is another tricky thing to do without losing any files... Or do you have a better workaround method for this ?

Jay

There are two methods to do so, depending on your current folder structure, I'll give the first example here.

Create a shared folder on the Plus account from the Dropbox site.
Invite the Basic account to the shared folder.
On your computer, move all the Basic files and folders into that folder. This is assuming you don't already have any shared folders, since you can't move shared folders into other shared folders.
Once all your files are there and showing up as synced, you can remove the Basic account from the shared folder entirely, which would empty that account, but keep the shared folder on the Plus account.
Sign out of your Basic plan on the Dropbox desktop app.
Sign in with the Plus account.
Move the folders out of the shared folder via the computer to more or less keep the same structure as before.
This might also keep the creation and modification dates of your files as they were on the Basic plan.

Let me know how this goes!