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Moved a shared folder out of the Dropbox folder to the Desktop on Windows - how can we put it back?

Hi there!

We have a user with Dropbox on their Windows 10 machine. Somehow they've moved a shared folder out of the Dropbox folder and onto the desktop. It appears to be behaving like a Dropbox shared folder still (and it still appears in the web app and for other users) so it's not completely out of Dropbox. However the user doesn't want the folder on the desktop.

How can we move this back into the Dropbox folder? Regular file moving operations don't seem to work (keeps asking for Administrator permission to move the folder).

We've tried doing an uninstall\reinstall of Dropbox and this hasn't worked.

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Comments

Walter

Hi there @DAC4 - sorry to hear about this.

Can you please send us a screenshot of the exact error they're getting when trying to move the shared folder back into their Dropbox folder?

This will help us assist further.

DAC4

Hi - see error here: https://imgur.com/a/egs9aMn

I have tried allowing Administrator permissions, but this doesn't work, and the user has full control permission for the Dropbox folder. I also tried adding Everyone to the Dropbox folder with Full Control permissions but this didn't work either.

Hannah

Hey @DAC4, unfortunately, we can't access the link you sent us, for security reasons.

Can you attach the actual screenshot to your next reply?

Also, you mentioned that the shared folder still shows up in its location on dropbox.com and on the computers of other members; does the person who moved it, also see it in their account online?

AngeliqueL

Hi there,

I'm on the design team at Dropbox and did some asking around. This screen capture isn't a Dropbox prompt, it's a Windows system prompt. So the first question is whether they are actually trying to move it into Dropbox or somewhere else, where they don't have access.

Is it possible they are just seeing it in Explorer in the Dropbox folder and it looks like it's on their computer? If so, they can make it go away using Selective sync. I'm on a Mac but recently did that for a Marketing folder I didn't want to see (shown in attachment).

If they had actually moved it to their desktop from the Dropbox folder, in the app, it would be deleted from Dropbox and not still showing there. So they could also have created a copy.

If you ask that person reply to this thread, we can take a look at their activity log and see what's actually happened. Otherwise, we're just guessing as to what they've done.

Hope that helps!

Angelique

Sarah38

Hi!

I am having the same issue as the original post. I accidently dragged a shared folder out of my teams shared dropox onto my dashboard and now when I try to drag it back I get an error message saying I don't have permission to add it back to dropbox. Any suggestions?

Hannah

Hey @Sarah38, what do you see about this move in your events page? Does it show as deleted?

AngeliqueL

Hi @Sarah38,

I'm on the product design team here at Dropbox. @Hannah is right that you should check first to see if the files have actually been deleted from the team's Dropbox account. You can do that on your deleted files page. If the folder is there, you can select and restore it.

For the future, you aren't able to drag folders into the top-level folder structure in the app. The easiest way is to create a new folder on dropbox.com and then drag files into that new folder in the desktop app.

Let us know if that worked!

Thanks,

Angelique