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Change my Dropbox folder name on my PC

I have my dropbox folder in the D drive of my computer. For some reason, the dropbox folder is not named "D:\Dropbox", but "D:\Dropbox (Elliotfan)" with my account name together. Does anybody know how to return the name back to "D:\Dropbox" without messing up the saved files?

Thanks.

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Accepted answers

Stefanie

Hi Emilio,

I can only confirm what Rich already pointed out.

Dropbox for Business will allow you to access both your personal Dropbox and your work Dropbox from the same computer. To help signify which Dropbox folder is connected to which account, we've chosen to rename the business Dropbox to "Dropbox (business name)." Currently, there is not a way to change the name of this folder back to just "Dropbox".

By default, we place a hidden symlink from Dropbox to the new Dropbox (team name), so you may find that your applications can continue working by accessing this symlink.

However, if this does not work for you, and if you are comfortable creating symbolic links on your machine, there is a workaround that may help you. Please note that this workaround is not supported by our support team, so if you are unable to set up this environment, I'd recommend that instead of using this workaround, you move any files needed by your affected application out of your Dropbox folder instead.

If outside code sources don't cooperate with the space character or parenthesis character, the simplest workaround would be the following:

- pause Dropbox
- remove the hidden symlink at Dropbox
- Rename the "Dropbox (team name)" folder to Dropbox
- Place a symlink at "Dropbox (team name)" that points to "Dropbox"
- Resume syncing

This will allow Dropbox to continue accessing the content through the symlink, and it will allow any external code to use the "Dropbox" folder pathname that doesn't include the additional characters in the path.

I hope this helps!

All comments

Roel K.

I love Dropbox, but this is a weird lack of function. Shouldn't it be really easy to change the Dropbox names?

What if your company changes it's name. Would the root folder have the old name forever?

Jim C.52

I have loved Dropbox for years. Now, I have serious doubts for two reasons: 1). The "Hard sell" to upgrade to business is offensive and inconsiderate. 2). Having to suffer through the confusion and inconvenience of removing a team name just because I inadvertently clicked for the free trial of "Business". This is sad.

So until I change to another provider, I guess I will continue with the root folder with the name: Dropbox <TeamName>. CRAP. Our little bank has about 20 users and I have some influence there since I own the bank. BOO Dropbox.

NnN C.

This is horrible. I came here thinking I would find the obvious solution I was missing to this unassumingly simple issue only to find that it has been years in the making.

First of all I was removed from a shared account for work. Which apparently forces the DB app to revert the naming convention for the local folder without also giving me the option to first consolidate files out of the separate personal and shared account folders. So now my local DB folders are unlinked and all of my local DB files are no longer connected to the DB app. Then what I've learned so far is that I either need to use a clunky unsupported workaround, or re-sync all my 500+ gigs down from the DB servers?

You guys do understand people use this for working right? Maybe adding something like a simple "rename Dropbox folder" feature would help greatly, or hell you could even have the Dropbox folder automatically rename itself back to what it was previously for all I care. Myself and I'm sure many others never want the folder to become unlinked in the first place! This is bad UX and you know it.

Justin M.34

I'm married to dropbox for years of legacy work. Sync is amazing: I do not work for or endorse them in any way. I own a web design and development shop and just wanted something that works. Doesn't have every dropbox feature , but it has all the ones you use everyday. Been a long time since my first post in this thread, which goes back even further. Sync is awesome, its faster, hogs less cpu, and its very personal/business/multiple account friendly. I'll be paying for both for prob a few years, but I don't mind. Dropbox had every opportunity to fix this. It must be a very expensive and fundamental problem to fix.

ehhx85

I just chatted with the help desk about this and apparently NO ONE ever read this message. Because they would have fixed this over the past year.

ehhx85

I agree 100% and had to tell them the exact same thing. How do you all not know about this?

kannb71

Hallelujah! Thank you, Stefanie! Just what I needed.

Citizentoni

This is terrible. It's May 2017 and still this has not been addressed??

bleen

Why is this forum topic marked "SOLVED"? The symlink workaround is not a sufficiant solution. This is not solved.

Rich

There is nothing to solve. Dropbox is working as intended.

bleen

Having a space in the folder name (even when using symlinks) causes huge problems with certain pacakge managers like composer and other tools like Kubernetes if you keep your project files in Dropbox. Requiring folder names to have spaces (and parens for that matter) is hugely problematic for developers and software engineers.

@Rich wrote:
There is nothing to solve. Dropbox is working as intended.

I agree that Dropbox is working as intended but everyone on this thread has indicated that the intended behavior is unsatisfactory and should be changed. I have not seen any response in this thread from Dropbox indicating that this will never be changed, therefore this is not "solved".

Rich

Solved doesn't necessarily mean that the concern has been solved to everyone's satisfaction. It's also used as a way to pin the most relevant reply, in this case, from a Dropboxer, to the top of the page for everyone to see.

Justin M.34

This problem isn't solved. Its not a bug - its a fundamental design flaw.

Inability to rename folder -> problem for developers and many others.

This thread is long and old enough to show that many Business customers don't just want, but require this feature. Bottom line still exists - DropBox is unusable for my business and many others.

I don't fault any single developer working on DropBox, it is a generally great product. But not realizing spaces and special characters break build paths when the collective development leads came up with this naming plan... there is absolutely no excuse for that. None.

Zed

Hello everybody,

Your feedback on the topic is very much appreciated and we monitor threads like this closely.

Technically speaking, in terms of forum practices, this specific thread can be considered Solved as the answer to the question has been provided.

If you have some extra time, please go to the Idea Section here:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/idb-p/101002013

and create a thread so people can vote on it. Be sure though that I will make sure your comments are passed on to the developers.

Thank you all for taking the time to discuss this!

Justin M.34

Marking this solved and closing and referring to a seperate link is a cop out.

Saying an undocumented symlink hack is a solution is not a solution. This thread was closed prematurely because it is disruptive, and DropBox knows it but can't effectively do anything about it ( And i do sympathize with the complexities in core architecture ).

Understand just doing your job.

This week I am making it a priority to move everything off DropBox. Nothing personal. Its just business.

Still, marking this solved when it isn't is the straw that broke the camel's back.

I hope to move back onto DropBox in the future, your customer support is A+++ and always a pleasue, but this issue is very real, absolutely NOT solved.

Rich

Justin M.34 wrote:
Still, marking this solved when it isn't is the straw that broke the camel's back.

As I stated previously...

Solved doesn't necessarily mean that the concern has been solved to everyone's satisfaction. It's also used as a way to pin the most relevant reply, in this case, from a Dropboxer, to the top of the page for everyone to see.

There is no other method to pin a reply to the top of a thread. Marking a reply as the solution is the only way to pin a reply. It does not necessarily mean that the issue has been resolved.

Justin M.34

Touchè, semantics.

It would be misleading to allude this as solved. But as long as it stays pinned and relevant, cool.

The solution is to be able to control DropBox folder names, which is currently not possible.

ehhx85

So I have stopped using Dropbox business and now that I am about to finish my doctoral degree in nuclear engineering and I'm asking myself "When did Dropbox fall off". I've loved your data service but your customer service is about as bad as Comcast.

Zed

Hello @Justin M.34 & @ehhx85,

I understand that this may be causing inconvenience but at the moment this is not a supported feature. I can reassure you though that this whole thread has been passed to our developers and they are aware of your comments.

As @Rich wrote in the last post, the only way to pin a post that can help users regarding an issue or inform them about their question is by marking this post as a solution - this automatically marks the thread as solved.

Your comments help us get better and I appreciate taking the time to post here. I will be around and please let me know if you need anything else on this or another topic.

Thank you!

davidhere40

I have a much better solution. I have over 50GB of data in my dropbox. So even the solution where I reinstall to get the default folder name wasn't acceptable to me. So I found a great work around. Just create a symbolic "hard link". I had never used one before, but it's supported but all windows, linux and mac. Here is how I created the link:

1) Open a cmd prompt as admin. (Search for cmd.exe, right click and then click run as administrator)

2) Execute: mklink /J "C:\Dropbox" "C:\Dropbox (Personal)"

Now you can use "C:\Dropbox" (or whatever location you decided on) to interact with the same files as if you had typed in C:\Dropbox (Personal). All software and programs will now treat it as if the folder were located there The best part is that this solution is easy, fast and doesn't have any downsides.

ekul

This is not solved, but Dropbox needs to solve it (and mark it unsolved until then). To be clear, all that is absolutely needed is a checkbox for 'compatible dropbox naming' which will switch the space for an underscore and remove the parentheses. Of course it would be lovely to have full control of naming, but for the time being can you just stop your software breaking our computers please? Unbelievable that you've been promoting an unsupported workaround for over two years rather than just fixing this.

Justin M.34

LOL at DropBox's latest redesign. Its cool, I guess... Martketing ploy. Most design media is mixed reviews, majority negative. Looks like it cost a lot of money, but doesn't have legs. A little Brutalism mixed with a few other shot term trends... Feels like some high level director was pressured to attempt to generate new business in new markets. Whomever was in charge of that **bleep**show def shat the bed on that one.

What would actually be cool is if you listened to your product team and simply let people rename their f*ng dropbox folders. So they don't have spaces and special characters.

That is literally all we want. No symlinks. Let us rename our folders. BOOM! Problem solved!

That would change everything. But you didn't prioritize that. Instead you launched a visual campaign that will be stale in 14-30days. I'm already over it. Its juvenile design at best. Screams style over function... childish, desperate. Ugh.

As a Dropbox user since Day 1 - PLEASE- stick to product design. And get it right. I've paid you at leat 3-5k a year by my books for almost ten years. I loved you, but you suck now! Sync.com is kicking your asses feature-wise up and down the court. The measly 15-20 Pro accounts I switched off DropBox to Sync might not mean **bleep** to whomever is reading this. But if you did care, you'd try to do a little better. Which you aren't. So.... yeah. **bleep** shame. Dropbox had every opportunity to not be an outdated and out performanced tool. Which is exactly what it is now.

pphilggg

This does not work on a Mac... no hardlinks to directories

pphilggg

The fact that this has been open for so long really says that Dropbox is viewed as a tool only for documents not for any sort of programming or business applications. Which is fine I guess. As long as everybody knows that going in.

mb2

Putting the entire path link inside " " worked for me in Latex. Coding should be similar.