You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Dropbox couldn't set up the folder
I'm trying to restore a back-up of one of the folders from my old laptop, onto my new laptop. However, I get this message that Dropbox couldn't set up the folder: "Move folder back to its def...
Hi Megan,
The steps I followed are as follows:
I visited https://www.dropbox.com/backup/all , clicked on 'Manage back-ups,' and selected 'Open Back-up settings.'
I then selected the old laptop's name (which is the same as the new one), and clicked 'Restore.'
I clicked 'Restore' again on the next window, and then 'Confirm' on the dialog box.
I then got the error shown in the third screenshot below.
(The folder that I'm trying to download is actually the newest local version of my Google Drive, since Google Drive sync unfortunately stopped working on the old laptop.)
Thanks,
Iain
Jay
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi iain_mcguinness, generally, we don't recommend having folders from other cloud providers in the Dropbox folder to prevent situations like this from occurring.
Have you already set up the Google Drive program? Could you try quitting it completely and then try restoring the folder again?
That didn't work for me, Jay, unfortunately. Are there any other suggestions?
Dropbox Plus is pretty useless to me, if it can't fulfil this function.
A new laptop or PC is almost always likely to have a different username, and different folder locations!
I don't understand why I can't simply download the folder (it's too big to zip), like I would any other.
- Megan
Hi iain_mcguinness, is your folder located on your C: drive?
What is currently the location of both the 'Google Drive' and the Dropbox folder? Can you send us a screenshot of the folder paths?
Appreciate you getting back to me.
With this new laptop, it has a small 512-GB SSD C drive, and a large 4-TB D drive (where I'm storing all of my photos, videos and other cloud files). Therefore, the new folder paths are 'D:\Google Drive' and 'D:\Dropbox.'
I did try recreating the Google Drive on C drive, under my old Microsoft user account folder name, 'Iain McGuinness,' and actually installing Google Drive there, but this did nothing to stop the error.
My new Microsoft user account folder name is 'hello,' which is the first part of my email address. I'd have preferred it was my own name, but this is how Windows 11 set it up.
I would simply transfer the Google Drive folder from the old laptop's SSD to this new laptop via a USB enclosure, but I had problems accessing it, due to file encryption and permission errors. Therefore, Dropbox was going to be my saving grace.
Without a solution from Dropbox, I'm probably just going to have to seek expert advice on sorting out the permission errors, and cancel my subscription.
