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How do I re-link the File Provider Dropbox folder?

Hi,

I upgraded to the new file provider dropbox a few months ago. In the last few weeks, dropbox didn't seem to be syncing, even after I clicked move to online only and my hard-drive suddenly filled up leading to mac warning signs.

So I logged out then back in. When I logged back in, I found that dropbox had "unlinked" my file provider folder. It had forgotten that I had done the file provider update and made a new blank old-style dropbox folder, which it is trying to start resyncing everything.

The trouble is, I don't have enough hard-drive space to enable it to fully resync, and I'm worried that there might be data in the file-provider folder that never actually synced to dropbox online, so I can't delete anything. And it won't let me re-update to file provider until everything is synced. Which it can't because of the lack of harddrive space.

Finally, the nature of my work means that I have more than 500,000 files and so I had all my settings setup to avoid that trap, but dropbox also seems to have forgotten that. And I can't edit them until it's synced.

Given that 10 minutes ago, everything seemed to be working fine (or maybe not given the potential lack of syncing), I'm pretty frustrated.

How can I simply re-link my file provider folder so that I don't lose anything or have to resync 500Gb? Or any other suggestions to get me out of this catch 22? Any advice would be very welcome.

Many thanks, Helen

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Jay

Hi @hgreatrex, thanks for messaging the Community.

It sounds like when you signed out and back in again, the Dropbox desktop application reverted to the older version without File Provider.

It wouldn't be possible to relink to the File Provider folder, without first upgrading to File Provider in the desktop app.

Could you attach a screenshot showing the message you're seeing when attempting to upgrade to File Provider?

This will help me to assist further!

hgreatrex

Thanks!

Here you go - the trouble is that my hard-drive is full with the file provider version, so I can't get it to finish syncing to the old folder.

Thanks for all the help

Helen

Nancy

Hi Helen! Apologies for the late reply; it looks like we missed your latest post.

Since you mention not having enough hard drive space on your computer, you can try creating a new Dropbox folder and avoid re-syncing everything at once with the use of selective sync.

Once the desktop app is up to date, you can start gradually re-syncing your folders and comparing the files you already have in the old Dropbox folder, so that you can make sure that there’s no content that hadn’t been previously synced to your Dropbox account online (if there is, you can move it over to the new Dropbox folder, as well).

If you see that there isn’t enough space to sync some of your files in the meantime, you can try deleting content from your old Dropbox folder, but only after you’ve made sure that it’s available on www.dropbox.com.

jnelken

That is a ridiculous answer. No customer should need to completely re-sync their hard drive because you're not allowed to re-download the dropbox app and have it start in File Provider mode. Absolutely stupid. I have half a million files. You want me to dual-sync and audit every one of them because you have a broken product?? All while operating on near zero remaining disk space in order to have my old Dropbox available for the process? Really?