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Forum Discussion
DropBox Takes over the Documents folder
i am having this issue with a mac mini M1 - i am running the beta software that is supposed to work with the M1. I migrated data only using the migration assistant built into macs. Dropbox takes over my documents folder as soon as a sign in and the path changes showing it is now a dropbox folder - after doing a migration that folder is empty and if i restore to that folder the files disappear within a few minutes.
I am likely saying goodbye as i am fed up with poor mac support and poor support in general. I spent 4 hours chatting with their support people BEFORE i did the migration because i anticipated issues and sure enough the issues are real.
Thanks for getting back to me, sturdy.
I understand your frustration, so let's see if we can manually revert the locations of your desktop folders. Please follow these steps:
1) Firstly, check that computer backup has been disabled successfully for each folder.
- Go to Finder. In the top bar, click Go —> Home.
- If you see shortcuts of the folders (Icons with arrows), select them, right-click, and Move to Trash. If you don't see the shortcut arrows, then move to step 2.
- Click Continue on this prompt > "Item Desktop is locked. Do you want to move it to the Trash anyway?"
- When they are removed, right-click New Folder and create one for each item that you deleted in the previous step, for example, Desktop, Documents, and Downloads.
- To restore your Favorites entries, in the top bar, click Finder —> Preferences —> Sidebar, and check each item. You can also remove any unwanted entries via right-click—> ‘Remove from Sidebar.’
- To fix the Downloads dock entry:
- Right-click on it —> Options —> "Remove from Dock".
- In the Finder sidebar, right-click Downloads —> "Add to Dock".
- Click the Apple icon —> Force Quit —> Finder —> Relaunch.
- Now, you can move any files from Dropbox back to their respective original locations.
2) If the computer backup has been successful, then you should be able to simply open Finder, go to your Dropbox folder, and click on the Mac folder.
3) Click into the folder, for example, Documents, where you want to revert your files back to.
4) Copy or move those files back to the original folders, which you can open from the Favorites in the left pane of Finder.
- Rich
Super User II
iTechnology
wrote:
Dropbox takes over my documents folder as soon as a sign in and the path changes showing it is now a dropbox folder
You have the computer backup feature enabled.
That is not true.. It is frustrating with dull response about backups, link or sync issues. After following all these steps, the issues still persists.
I had Dropbox uninstalled on my Mac and permanently deleted the Dropbox folder from my device which also apparently deleted my Documents folder, Desktop folder and others. When i create a new folder on my desktop this is what i noticed; untitled/Users/user/dropbox/my mac(**bleep**.hitron. home)/desktop/untitled or Dropbox/minime/Documents.
Why would Dropbox move my Documents folder and Desktop folder, all contents on my desktop now have Dropbox in the path (new and existing) and take ownership of it.
After doing a full restore from a time machine, whenever I clicked on the Documents or any contents on my desktop, it would actually take me to /Users/MY_ID/Dropbox/blah.../Documents, with Dropbox app installed or backup or any of those.
It is indeed very weird having Dropbox in the path, also why an app might want to change the MacOS shortcut to it's own sync folder.
Anyway, this is what i am going through.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey sturdy, sorry to see you're having this issue.
Is the Dropbox application currently uninstalled?
If so, can you please reinstall it and then follow these steps, to see if they help?
i do not believe i have the backup feature set up? when i click that screen under preferences for the desktop app - i see by default the 3 boxes are checked but i uncheck them and click not now - with that said i might have had it set up at one point because i see a file called mac with my backup inside of it. I just did a migration so my guess is that file is from the old computer. any ideas what to do?
i read the faq and i un-linked all of my computers and then re started DB and linked my new M1 mac - it does the same thing.
for anyone reading this - i would never use this service again in 100 yrs - i am a very sophiticated user with both macs, windows and linux. Here are some issues:
- Downloading any file over 1 gig is impossible - so if u backup a 3 gb file and decide dropbox sucks you cannot download the file unless u break it up into smaller file sizes
- system is super buggy with M1 silicon macs - takes over documents folder in many cases
- if u think u are going to migrate and use dropbox u are dreaming - it places every folder from old machine into a sub folder dropbox/
- if u think u can migrate to a NEW machine using an ext hard drive or any migration tool - the files get duplicated or have issues
- also how exactly do you migrate if you clicked online only and it now longer recognises your machine because u migrated to a new one
DROPBOX IS NOT GOOD!
