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Sandhu's avatar
Sandhu
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

Reinstallation of Dropbox after clean install of OS, without Re-downloading all files

Dear Community  Greetings, I had to make a clean install of Mac OS, prior to which i copied all my dropbox folder to an external HD.  I need to reinstall/download the dropbox on my machine but I w...
  • Walter's avatar
    7 years ago

    Hey there Sandhu - how are you today?

    As you wish to re-install our desktop app and you do not want to re-download all of your files from the server, you need to choose the "Advanced" setup option during the installation process. Then you need to choose the parent folder of the existing Dropbox folder as the location for this new install.

    For instance, if your old Dropbox folder was added to: C:\Desktop\Dropbox you would need to choose C:\Desktop and the client will try and create a new Dropbox folder. As you'd be connecting with the same Dropbox account as before, Dropbox will detect the existing folder and will then prompt you to merge the Dropbox folder. Upon merging the desktop version of Dropbox will check the existing files and the server versions and update accordingly.

     Please do note that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder or on the web interface while the folder was "offline" will generate conflicted copies.

    I hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions. 

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